PACKING-HOUSES, MEAT EXPORT, AND CATTLE RAISING
The meat business is not a new one in Brazil, for her cattle raising states have had a surplus of beef animals ever since the first donatarios sailed out to take possession of their strips of coast, and brought seeds, saplings, ducks and chickens, goats, horses and cattle along with them: the cattle throve, soon ran wild in the interior, and becoming modified by natural selection developed national types which are today quite distinctive although their European origin is recognizable. The first cattle were shipped to Brazil to the Capitania of S. Vicente in 1534 by Dona Anna Pimentel, consort of the first captain, and manager of the interests of the colony during his absence in India.
Brazil has thirty million head of cattle. That is to say, two or three million more than the Argentine possesses. But her herds are only worth a fraction of the Argentine value because the stock is poor, some of it thin and scrubby, with but one steadily developed type of first-class quality. The scientific breeders of Brazil—and there is quite a list of them—have lacked a reason for developing their work until recently. In the absence of the packing-house there was no demand for beef beyond that of the matadouros (town slaughter-houses) and the xarque factories. For the xarque makers any class of animal would serve: a Hereford of pure blood would bring no more than a zebu unless he happened to weigh more.
Xarque making is the ancient meat-drying industry, invented by who knows what hunter in bygone ages; it is the biltong of Africa, the tasajo of the Argentine, the jerked beef of the North. Well salted and dried, it is good food enough, and France did not disdain to buy it from Brazil for the use of her troops in 1915–18. The southerly states of Brazil are the great supporters of cattle stocks, and there are the extensive beef-drying factories; Rio Grande slaughters over half a million head of cattle for this purpose every year, the number rising to its maximum in 1912 with nine hundred thousand head, and chiefly ships the xarque produced to other Brazilian regions; it is the carne secca of that beloved Brazilian dish, the feijoada, eaten all over the Union. The coastal and northern regions of Brazil, comparatively poor cattle regions, are so much dependent upon dried beef imports that the xarque industry should have a ready market in the future as in the past: but since 1914 a rival has risen up seriously threatening the old industry in prestige.
Almost simultaneously two packing-houses, both in S. Paulo State, began demanding cold storage space in vessels calling at Santos, and refrigerator cars on railways leading to the port. Brazil, to the astonishment of the markets, was offering chilled and frozen beef. At any other time she might have received a welcome less enthusiastic, but her offer came at a time when Europe needed every pound of meat for army use; the Brazilian product was tested by Smithfield standards, found good, and today has its place in overseas meat markets. It is a modest place, but today beef is taking its stand among the “principaes artigos da exportação”—hides have long stood in the list of thirteen favoured names—although the end of the war diminished overseas demands.
During 1915 shipments were made in increasing amounts month by month, the total for the year reaching about 8,514 tons, with a value of 6,122 contos. In 1916 shipments rose to nearly 34,000 tons; in 1917 to over 66,000; but sales decreased after the close of the war, when contracts for supplying troops in the field ceased, and markets closed in the slump of 1921.
The first frigorifico of Brazil was built by Paulista enterprise with Paulista capital, in the far north-west of São Paulo where the best pastures extend. The Companhia Frigorifica e Pastoril built its plant near the terminus of the Paulista Railway, at Barretos, and is headed by Dr. Antonio da Silva Prado, an energetic builder-up of his State and a man with many honours and interests. Opened in 1913, the frigorifico first supplied chilled meat to the city of S. Paulo; export was not seriously considered until the war in Europe began with its demands upon world food supplies. The first Brazilian shipment of exported meat was sent to England in November, 1914, an experimental ton and a half. During the ensuing year that country took four thousand, three hundred and sixty tons, Italy over two thousand tons, and the United States nearly the same quantity.
The figures displayed a steady rise all through 1915, January’s ten tons being quickly outclassed by April’s two hundred and ten and June’s over five hundred and seventy tons; by November Brazil was shipping two thousand tons a month. The standard was more than maintained as time went on cattle raisers improving animals for sale to meet demands, and proving the fattening quality of Brazilian pastures. But until after the close of 1918 little blood stock could be imported, and in 1922 an expert calculation gave 12% as the proportion of fat cattle in Brazil.
The output of Barretos was speedily rivalled. In May, 1915, another packing-house started operations, at Osasco on the outskirts of S. Paulo city. It is the property of the Continental Products Company, capital and personnel originating in the Sulzberger house at Chicago, and it is independent of, but has friendly relations with, the Farquhar group of interests, which include large railway control and a thriving land and cattle company.
The Osasco plant is, like Barretos, an excellent specimen of its class, operating with fine up-to-date machinery and all modern packing-house devices; on the edge of S. Paulo city, separated from the railway only by a strip of open grassy country, this establishment has the advantage of a short haul for its meat. The São Paulo Railway has to carry the product but fifty miles to Santos port. On the other hand, the Barretos plant’s position has the advantages of being in the heart of the best cattle country, and of getting both animals and labour at low prices; the journey from Barretos to S. Paulo, by the Paulista line, takes about fourteen hours. Brazilian employees are used at both packing-houses, the industry occupying about a thousand workmen. During 1916 a third frigorifico was opened, on the docks of Rio de Janeiro, but this chiefly performs cold storage functions, and before the close of 1919 ten packing-houses were in operation or building. General world depression in 1921 was responsible for the closure of most of these establishments for more than local demands. Few complaints have been registered in regard to quality so far; the Brazilian beef is on the whole smaller than that to which the meat markets are accustomed, and it was found that the quarters did not fill the space allowed for similar Argentine and Uruguayan meat when shipping first began. Dr. Prado says that the average weight of beeves slaughtered for export during the first year of operation at Barretos was only two hundred and eighty kilos. But this small, fat-less meat has a superior flavour—as anyone who travels in South America knows well.
The Cattle Industry.
The two frigorificos (packing-houses) in operation, at Barretos, top; at Osasco, below. Also humped “zebu” cattle of Indian descent, and, lower, a calf of native Caracú stock.
It is generally reckoned that ten per cent of a cattle herd is fit for the slaughterhouse: but Brazil cannot offer three million of her existing stock to the yards. She has too many varieties, probably too much of the humped breed derived from Indian ancestry, although it has warm defenders, and there is a conspicuous lack of young fat cattle. As an example of the speed with which poor stock may be improved by good, unified methods, there is Brazil’s neighbour Argentina, a country which thirty-five years ago had less than nine million head of cattle, and these of a breed inferior to the Brazilian average today. Setting about her task methodically, Argentina created a complete transformation in the character of her herds, and while exporting great quantities of meat at the same time increased her stock so largely that by the year 1910 she had thirty million head. Sums spent on breeding stock were enormous during this period: in 1906, the banner year of importation, Argentina purchased (almost exclusively from Great Britain) 2,450 pure-bred cattle, 7,500 thoroughbred sheep, and one thousand blood horses. As a result she has animals today which take prizes side by side with pure Herefords and Durhams; the average abattoir price for steers is about two hundred Argentine pesos, or say eighty American dollars; she is able to record the sale of thousands of splendid creatures, amongst them a champion bull bred on her pastures which brought the price of thirty-two thousand dollars in United States currency. Today Argentina has more herds of thoroughly pure stock cattle than any other country in the world; estancias full of animals of fine blood, so much alike that to see them in endless lines, with white star on breast and head, is like looking at a concrete arithmetical calculation, are handed down as inheritances. Yet when the Argentine began her work she had no such advantages of modern invention as lie to the hand of Brazil; cold storage was not commercially developed, packing-houses were immature. She had to face the competition of the United States, and world markets were not educated to the reception of South American meat. Now cold storage is an art, steamers are fitted with refrigerator space as a matter of course, South American meat is welcome on world markets, and the United States is no longer taken into consideration as a rival meat exporter.
In 1901 the United States exported 352,000,000 pounds of beef; in 1910, 76,000,000; in 1914, only a little more than 6,000,000 pounds. Argentina had caught up with her North American sister in 1905, passed and out-distanced her until she was able last year to say that her only serious competitor was Australasia. It is true that the European War has caused a revival of meat export from the United States, but home demands are today so acute that no more than a temporary reaping of high prices is at the bottom of the movement. Argentina may look for a more formidable, because a younger, rival, nearer to her northern border.
The qualifications of Brazil as a future land of fine cattle are three in the main: first, her possession of an existing rebanho of 30,000,000 head; next her natural pastures and good climate which permit stock to remain in the open during the winter; third, tremendous expanses of suitable lands at moderate prices. Argentina has no natural pastures; she sows alfalfa, needs five acres of it to fatten one animal for six months and is thus at an expense of $7.50 for this purpose against Brazil’s outlay of rather less than three and one-half dollars, counting the value of the five acres of alfalfa land at three hundred dollars, the cost of twelve acres of Brazilian capim gordura at one hundred and thirty-three dollars, and interest on the two investments at five per cent. In regard to available territory there is no comparison; Brazil’s one state of Matto Grosso could swallow the whole cattle-raising country of the Argentine, without taking into consideration Goyaz, Minas Geraes, S. Paulo, Paraná or Rio Grande do Sul.
Space and climate, however, are not all that goes to make a cattle country fattening fine stock, and it need scarcely be said that much must be done before the cattle lands of Brazil can seriously compete with those of the Argentine: the time is not yet ripe for the wild pastures of Goyaz and Matto Grosso to fatten cattle in the same proportion as Rio Grande State. This state, with an area of two hundred and thirty-seven thousand square kilometers feeds about nine million head of cattle, a remarkably good showing in comparison with the premier cattle province of Argentina, Buenos Aires, which, with a superficial area of not much more than 305,000 square kilometers, feeds seven and a half million head.
Pastures are not—except by careful fazendeiros—planted in Brazil because there happens to be a gift of nature in the way of natural grasses, the capins of the sertão. Some of these are good, and some would feed nothing but a goat. Brazilian stock-raisers who combine earnestness with capital plant their own best grasses and appear to get satisfactory results, while I have also seen some interesting experiments made with “Soudan” or other of the wonderful varieties of grasses with which Africa is endowed. For lack of interior pastures the cattle of Brazil are periodically brought on foot for distances which may vary from a hundred to six hundred miles; many die by the way, and the unfortunate beasts are mere skin and bone when they arrive in the good grass country. On the São Paulo side of the Paraná river are some of the finest natural pastures of Brazil, but in many parts of the São Paulo uplands, interior Rio, Paraná, Santa Catharina, and Rio Grande, admirable cattle lands are to be seen. Rio Grande, especially towards the Uruguay boundary, is one of the most delightful grazing regions imaginable; Minas, too, shows some fine lush green grass lands, with the special advantage that cattle need never be put under shelter in the mild winter which visits this region. The good grass lands of Minas and interior São Paulo are frequently at an elevation of 1,400 feet, on the sloping plateau which is densely wooded near its dips to the rivers, and which is on the wide uplands covered with light matto alternating with sturdy native grass. It is not unlike the high veldt of the Western Transvaal in appearance, with the same exhilarating freshness, light and space, and the same miracle of nature performed immediately after the rains, when every inch of ground is covered with little dancing flowers and every bush is transformed into a nosegay.
Brazil possesses half a dozen technical breeding “posts” maintained by State or Federal Governments, but their number is insufficient to attack the work needed, and needed quickly; private enterprise must and does supplement government labours, but there is room in Brazil for scores of expert cattlemen with knowledge of semi-tropical conditions. Three-fourths of the State of Paraná, all Santa Catharina and all Rio Grande do Sul are below the Tropic of Capricorn, but although the great sertões of Brazil are inside the tropical belt, the effect of this latitude is partly nullified by the height of the plateau to which the largest area of the country attains.
One of the best breeding stations in Brazil is situated at the good, modern, actively-managed School of Agriculture at Piracicaba, in S. Paulo State, reached by the Sorocabana line; good imported bulls are stationed here, as well as some fine specimens of types developed in Brazil, notably the Caracú, a well-formed animal with a pale buff hide that is well fitted to form the base of standardized herds. The Caracú already has its official herd-book. Some attempts made to introduce pure blood foreign animals have ended in the death of the importations, perhaps chiefly because their accustomed food was lacking; for this reason the opinion of many stock-raisers in Brazil is against efforts to create pure herds of, say, Herefords, as Argentina has done, preferring the selection of a sound national type, acclimated, hardy, which can be improved by careful breeding. Controversy rages about this question in Brazil, and without trying to enter into it I will quote the opinion of Dr. Cincinato Braga, one of Brazil’s authorities on the subject of cattle, who says that at least six thousand pure-race bulls should be imported annually to improve the existing stock, while as a matter of fact only a few hundred enter yearly, and these chiefly as a result of private enterprise. The vexed question as to whether the introduction of Indian cattle, with its resultant inheritance of a hump in the zebu type (the hump has the disadvantage of not “packing,” say some of the buyers for frigorificos), is good or bad may be safely left to those ardent cattle-breeders Drs. Pereira Barretto, Eduardo Cotrim, Assis Brasil, Fernand Ruffier, and many others; it is undoubted that in the Triangle of Minas Geraes, with its centre Uberaba, fortunes have been made from prolific Indian cattle, but public opinion remains perplexed. Writing from Minas in early 1916, J. Nogueira Itagyba told the tale of his experiences as a cattle-breeder—how he imported a bull from Holland, bought Caracú cows, obtained a young herd, and then when droughts came in 1913–14, lost “thirty or more head, under a deluge of ticks, tumours, insects of all kinds....” He then bought a Nellore (Indian) bull, obtained a breed that was “a revelation” and came to this conclusion: “In Paraná and Rio Grande, where the climate is cold and there are fine pastures, a stock breeder with capital can raise the Devon, Hereford, Flemish, Durham, Jersey, etc.; he will have appropriate forage, and can use dips and calf-foods ... but in wild rural regions only strong, acclimated races resisting climate and insect plagues can prosper.”
Until the development of the meat industry for export Brazil sold nothing abroad as the product of her vast herds except hides, just as in the early days of Texas when only the skins of her cattle were worth anything. Today the cow-hide leather industry of North America in particular is largely dependent upon South American production, the three republics of Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay together furnishing fifty-five per cent of all the hides sold in world markets. Now and again the export of hides leaps for reasons that do not mean good business, as when Ceará in 1914–15 shipped out, in addition to her normal sales, the hides of animals that died of the terrible drought to the number of eight hundred thousand head; looking north to Mexico we find another big leap of hides exports after revolution invaded the cattle states, owners slaughtering their stock to avert theft by bandits.
Rise in sales by the Argentine and her neighbours since the European War has, however, been largely on account of increased slaughter in response to calls from the meat market: in two years Argentina has doubled her export of hides, Uruguay has multiplied her contribution by five, while Brazil between June, 1915 and March, 1916 shipped out thirty-seven million pounds of hides as against two and a half million pounds in a corresponding period two years previously.
The total value of Brazilian hides exported in 1915 was $13,260,000 U. S. currency; the amount was thirty-seven thousand metric tons. Of this nearly twenty thousand tons went to the United States, Great Britain taking 6,000 tons, France less than 3,000, and Uruguay 3,400 in round numbers.
War orders account for the marked stimulation of the leather business which is dependent to a considerable degree upon supplies of cattle-hides, the United States alone increasing her exports of leather from thirty-seven million dollars’ worth in 1914 to eighty million dollars’ worth in the fiscal year June 1915–16.