According to recent investigations by competent persons, the surface of the Argentine is largely composed of sandy soil; but a sandy loam is often found, also, more rarely, a gravelly clay; but there is very little actual clay. Other soils, such as absorbent calcareous earth, are not often found. In the subsoil a sandy clay abounds, the occurrence of clay and calcareous earths being greater in the subsoil than in the soil.
From the chemical point of view, the high percentage of potash—which remains practically undiminished—long ago attracted the attention of the agronomist. Phosphoric acid is also found, though in less proportions. Lime is often found in small quantities in the best soils in those districts most devoted to agriculture; and nitrogen is often abundant, except in the southern region of the Republic, and in some parts of the western region, where the rains are less
frequent, the winds violent, and the vegetation poor and stunted.
Saltish soils are of frequent occurrence in the west and south, but in general the salt is not in sufficient proportions to hinder agriculture, especially when suitable means of culture are employed.
Soils of great fertility are found in the central and southern regions, and occupy vast areas in the Provinces of Buenos Ayres and Santa Fé, and in parts of Córdoba and Entre Rios. “There are areas which are apparently of poor fertility,” says M. Charles Girola, from whom we derive these data, “which yield magnificent crops, thanks to irrigation or a better distribution of the water supply; especially in the west and the south.”[16]
[16] Investigación agricola en la República Argentina, by Charles Girola, Agronomic Engineer, Head of the Agronomic Bureau in the Ministry of Agriculture. (1904).
But in the Argentine Republic experience has shown that there is scarcely any soil which is not capable of profitable use, either for agriculture or stock-raising. It is very frequently remarked that lands which for a long time had been regarded as poor and almost sterile, unfit for exploitation, are to-day converted into admirable natural or artificial prairies, feeding numerous herds of sheep or cattle; or have more often been cleared by the colonist, and are now yielding excellent crops. This wonderful transformation is chiefly due to the pasturing of flocks and herds, which break up and enrich the soil; also to the fertilising organic matter contained in the turf; and finally to the addition of innumerable dead insects, which are brought by the wind and form a deposit on the soil, which acts as a kind of natural manure.
These favourable conditions of fertility are all united in the region known as the Pampa, which occupies the greater part of the temperate zone of the country. It consists of immense and virgin plains, which stretch to the horizon almost without landmarks or changes of level, and offer admirable opportunities both for agriculture and stock-raising.
Nearly all those Argentine lands which to-day bring fabulous prices were referred to, at an earlier period, as
“lands good for nothing.” For this reason a considerable premium should be put on the theoretical estimate, made a priori, of the areas suitable for advantageous cultivation, in proportion as human labour works its transformation.