THE SOIL
Naturally, the soil of such a vast area as that covered by the two Republics of Argentina and Uruguay is varied to an extent with which a book like the present cannot attempt to deal adequately. The greatest feature is, however, the celebrated Pampean formation which obtains over the whole of the Province of Buenos Aires, the greater parts of the Provinces of Santa Fé, Córdoba, San Luis and Mendoza, the National Territory of the Pampa Central, the Republic of Uruguay, and extends southwards beyond the Argentine Rio Negro. In many places on this formation there are also later alluvial deposits.
The lightest soils, those with the smallest proportion of clay and consequently the loosest, are found in the West, near the Andes.
Starting from the most sandy western region, the soil grows more and more compact towards the east, along the River Paraná, the South of the Province of Santa Fé and most of the Republic of Uruguay, the Northern part of the Province of Buenos Aires (where rather heavy soils predominate); while in the South and South-West, that is to say the southern portion of the Province of Córdoba, the National Territory of the Pampa Central and the central and southern part of the Province of Buenos Aires, the soil is of lighter, though firmer consistency, than that of the western part.
The generally salient qualities of the Pampean soil are richness in humus, deficiency in lime and good proportions of nitrogen and phosphoric acid. A characteristic feature of the subsoil is stratified layers of more or less calcareous concretions known as TOSCA (tufa or tophos stone). This layer is sometimes deep down; but in the southern region of the Province of Buenos Aires, beginning at Tandíl and Azul, it reaches nearly to the surface, so as to appear immediately under the soil, thus forming a waterproof subsoil impenetrable by roots.
The present writer has seen wheat growing on less than an inch of soil above the tosca; the roots spreading out at right angles to the stalks.
These layers of tosca or, in other parts, clay, are of great importance for holding water; seldom at any great distance from the surface.
On low and level plains when the soil is light or loose, chains of sand-hills are formed by the prevailing winds. Some of these are kept stationary by quick-growing vegetation, while others are constantly shifting. The shifting sandhill is, however, fast disappearing in consequence of the advances of pastoral industry; for, and by, which they are becoming fixed by herbaceous growth.
The tosca and clay subsoils have in many parts occasioned the formation of lagoons and swamps; the waters of which are, usually, at least brackish and often salt. A white or grey efflorescence seen in these swamps is locally called saltpetre, but in fact it only contains slight traces of nitre.
Towards the extreme North of the Province of Entre Rios and the Republic of Uruguay red soil heralds one’s approach to subtropical or tropical vegetation.
CHAPTER XII
LIVE STOCK
General Mitre, in his History of Belgrano, has said of the River Plate Territories:—
The natural pastures invited the inhabitants to the pastoral industry. The vast littoral placed the country in contact with the rest of the world by means of fluvial and maritime navigation. Its salubrious and temperate climate rendered life more pleasant and work more reproductive. It was indeed a territory prepared for live-stock breeding, constituted for commercial prosperity, and predestined by acclimatization to be peopled by all the races of the earth. Thus we see that the profitable occupation of its soil commences to be realized by means of live stock brought overland from Peru and from Brazil; that the commercial currents of the interior converge little by little towards the River Plate; that abundance and well-being are spread by this means; and that the first external act of the colonists after the foundation of Buenos Aires in 1580 is the exportation of a shipload of the fruits of their own work (hides and sugar), which awakens immigration and the commerce of importation.
This reference to the “commerce of importation” is an indication of the limitations under which the colonists laboured under Spanish rule. They might import from Spain as much as they could, but a very jealous guard was put on their exports lest these might compete with the industries of the Mother Country.
Seventy-two horses and mares were landed by Pedro de Mendoza when he founded the first settlement of Santa Maria de los Buenos Aires in 1535. Many of his followers were killed by the native Indians, but when Juan de Garay coming down through Paraguay laid the real foundations of the present capital of the Argentine Republic, he and those with him were surprised to find wild horses grazing on the Pampa. These were the descendants of those brought by Mendoza and the ancestors of the present equine stock of the River Plate countries, a stock which has, however, in common with all the live stock of these countries, been improved out of all recognition in the course of the last half-century by imported European strains. Still the wild descendants of Mendoza’s animals, acclimatized through countless generations and become hardy in their free life, were no bad raw material to improve upon.
The first appearance of cattle on the River Plate Pampa is, as has already been mentioned, credited to seven cows and a bull said to have been brought from Brazil, through Paraguay, by two Portuguese, the brothers Cipriano and Vicente Goes, early in the last half of the sixteenth century, but other cattle were introduced in far larger quantities about the same time or a little later under the conditions of the appointment of Juan de Galazary Espinoza as Treasurer of the River Plate. To Nunflo de Chaves is credited the honour of the introduction of the first goats and sheep in 1550.
Evidently large numbers of horses, cattle and sheep afterwards strayed in a semi-wild condition down south from Peru and Brazil, attracted by the wealth of pasturage.
The early history of the export trade of the River Plate colonists in hides, tallow, wool and jerked beef, is one of smuggling and bribery of officials. Nevertheless, even under such difficult circumstances and costly methods many settlers contrived, by also trading in European merchandise, to amass great wealth, the fortunes of many of them, says Mr. Gibson, amounting to over £60,000 sterling.
Meanwhile the increase of cattle was astounding if one did not consider the difficulties in the way of its utilization. In the middle of the seventeenth century anyone could take all he wanted from the wild herds up to 10,000 or 12,000 head, or more by obtaining licence to do so from the Governor.
The rights of free export of animal produce from Buenos Aires to Spain and open trade with the interior were first granted to the River Plate Colonies in 1778, under the Vice-Regal rule. But it was the Independence of the Colonies in 1810 which freed them from all commercial trammels and was the real commencement of their present agricultural and pastoral prosperity. Since then no events (except, of course, the advent of the railway in 1857) in the annals of the export commerce of the River Plate have been of greater importance than the founding of the Argentine Rural Society in 1866, and the discovery by Tellier of the preservation of meat at freezing point submitted to the Paris Academy of Science in 1872, and of Ferdinand Carré’s improvements for the transport of chilled meat.
The first freezing establishment in the River Plate was that erected by Señor Eugenio Terrasson at San Nicolás, in the Province of Buenos Aires, in 1883, and in the following year the legislature exempted frozen and chilled meat from the payment of export duty.
Over 99% of the whole exports of frozen and chilled meat from Argentina comes direct to the United Kingdom,[42] and we get quite one-half of the whole of our overseas meat and grain supplies from the two River Plate Republics.
The past half-century has seen amazing changes on the vast pasture lands of Argentina and Uruguay. The first of these was the invasion of what had formerly been the exclusive domains of cattle and sheep by agriculture. Little by little, wheat, especially, ousted the flocks and herds from an ever-increasing radius from the port of Buenos Aires. Land values increased as agriculture flourished till the time came when stock-breeders found themselves outbidden by wheat-growers or, rather, landowners found it more profitable to grow wheat or maize on lands which were economically accessible to transport. As the railways grew so did this almost exclusively cereal area.
This tendency continued until what may almost be termed the “discovery” in the River Plate Territories of the qualities of Alfalfa (Lucerne).
The double value of this crop as fodder and for improving the land by collecting and depositing atmospheric nitrogen, caused it to be planted by every intelligent estanciero, and brought back much of the cattle to properties which had seemed for ever given over to wheat-growing. Other contemporary reasons for the reappearance of cattle on the home lands were the increased demand for good slaughter animals initiated by the newly established cold-storage and export business and dawning appreciation of the fact that one cannot for ever go on growing immediately successive crops of wheat on the same land.
Thus were laid some foundations of scientific farming on more civilized lines, in which stock-raising and agriculture combine for the profit of the farmer. The cattle industry and horse-breeding also, gained fresh impetus from the abundance of alfalfa now grown everywhere on a large scale and on brackish land formerly considered valueless.
Sheep only, with their nomadic nature which demands large areas on which to roam, their close-cropping manner of grazing and their faculty for quickly ruining alfalfa fields on which they may be allowed to graze, are still only found in comparatively small numbers on the high-priced lands of the East-Central parts of Argentina and the South of Uruguay, being chiefly relegated to outlying districts in which land is still of comparatively small value and particularly, in Argentina, to those parts of Patagonia the inclement climate of which suits them as it does little else.
Nevertheless, the finest breeds of sheep are chiefly to be found on the “model” estancias, where as good live stock as any in the world is bred and intensive farming has begun to be appreciated for its own sake and on account of the normally ever-increasing value of land in all the most fertile and accessible rural districts of the River Plate Republics.
Durhams and Lincolns are the favourite breeds of cattle and sheep, though many fine strains of Herefords, Polled Angus, Merinos, Romney Marsh and Shropshires abound. No price is too high for the Argentine estanciero to pay for imported animals for the still greater perfection of his stock, and the great Show held under the auspices of the Rural Society at Palermo, a park-like suburb of the city of Buenos Aires, comes as a revelation to each expert breeder who travels, as many do every year, from Europe to the River Plate to see it. Money and care can do no better anywhere in the production of animals of the very highest quality. It may be noted that the prizes (always awarded by impartial foreign, usually British, judges) are more frequently gained by native Argentine breeders.
River Plate live stock suffers very little indeed from any of the diseases which are the breeder’s dread in most other countries; with the exception of sheep and pigs, the former being greatly subject to “fluke” and the latter to fever. Horse-breeding is carried on very successfully. The carriage horses exported by Señor Martinez de Hoz and others are now well known in Europe and the race-courses of Argentina and Uruguay are the constant scenes of the display of very fine horse-flesh indeed. That Argentine-bred race-horses are more successful in South America than freshly imported ones is no doubt due to climatic causes. Argentine race-horses are here specified because horse-breeding has been brought to a higher pitch of perfection in Argentina than has yet been attained in Uruguay.
Poultry and pig farming may yet be said to be in their infancy in both Republics, simply because both countries are still quite fully occupied with the two great established industries of producing grain and meat for export.
Given adequate population (how often must one ring the changes on this phrase!) very many rich sources of prosperity would quickly be disclosed to now almost unsuspecting European eyes. Poultry and pigs are two of the richest, and the most obvious for mention, in this chapter, of such almost latent sources.
The cold-storage establishment at Zárate, in the Province of Buenos Aires, some years ago erected a scientifically equipped plant for the curing of hams and bacon. But the difficulty is yet to obtain sufficient pigs of first quality to make the curing industry a success. Throughout the temperate zone of South America the climatic conditions are quite favourable to pig-raising; and food in the shape of maize and alfalfa is abundant at relatively small cost. When pigs and poultry receive the care which is now acknowledged to be necessary to, and given for, the best results from cattle, horses and sheep, River Plate poultry and pig produce will loom large on the markets of the world, besides supplying a daily increasing local demand.
What has been called the Alfalfa region because of the astounding yield of that forage given by its brackish, saltpetre-impregnated waters and sandy soil, lies to the West of the Province of Buenos Aires. Almost the whole of the two Republics are now, however, largely planted with alfalfa, the spread of which has grown rapidly since the several valuable qualities of that crop have come to be understood.
In many districts wheat has been sown on wheat year after year ever since the booming times of South American cereal export began. So that in many parts of such districts the soil can do no more, and in consequence the wheat yield has become unsatisfactory.
When these districts cease entirely to be able to yield any wheat at all, someone will lay down alfalfa as an alternate crop and will find the cost of having done so, and of reploughing, say, three years afterwards, insignificant compared with the value of the quantity and quality of wheat the same land will yield after that process of alternation; not to mention the value of the three years’ three or quite likely four, annual crops of alfalfa taken off it during that period.
This form of intensive farming will probably be the first to become obligatory, for economic reasons, on the generality of owners of land situated in the chief cereal areas.
Till to-day, landowners in these large favoured tracts have grown wealthy with little trouble and no thought as far as purely agricultural enterprise, as apart from stock-breeding, is concerned.
All this is, however, a digression from our present consideration of stock-raising, except as regards the increasingly intimate connection between stock-raising and agriculture in the most thickly populated districts; for the Argentine Rural Statistics (more availably complete than those of Uruguay) show that the much greater proportion of cattle is in the Provinces of Buenos Aires, Santa Fé, Córdoba and Entre Rios which are four of the chief cereal areas. And though there are more cattle in the province of Corrientes than in either of the three last-named Provinces, the vast herds of one of the largest meat-extract companies account for much of this. So that it may be taken that the Provinces of Buenos Aires (represented by a long way by the highest figures), Santa Fé, Córdoba and Entre Rios, with the Territory of the Pampa Central in respect of cereals, are the regions which, together, are the richest in Live Stock and cereals in Argentina.[43]
The following interesting table of the difference in numbers of cattle, sheep, and horses in 1895 and 1908 is taken from the Argentine National Census taken in the latter year, the latest census of the kind taken throughout the Republic.