The chief drawback of this system is that the labourer never becomes the owner of the soil he cultivates, so that he is not actuated by the powerful ties of property, which should attach him to the country and its destinies. On the other hand, too, the tenant tries to obtain from the soil the largest profit he can, without troubling to consider whether he is exhausting it or not; he leaves not even a tree behind him as a monument of his tenancy. But in spite of all these drawbacks this system does furnish the colonist with means to buy land cheaply later on, and in another district. Such is the history of many farmers, who began by humbly labouring under the conditions above described, and are to-day rich land-owners, possessing enormous tracts of land, which they work in the way that they find most profitable.
It is hardly necessary to say that the agricultural methods employed vary according to the situation of the farms, their fertility, and the means of communication. Agriculture, properly so called, establishes itself and spreads along the waterways or railways which facilitate the transport of the harvests. The crops principally grown cannot afford the cost of transport at a greater distance than 180 or 190 miles by railway from the nearest point of embarkation or consumption, and the nearest railway-station must not be further than 18 or 20 miles. There are only a few crops of greater value that can be profitably grown at greater distances, their higher prices covering the increased cost of transport.
The region consisting of the Provinces of Buenos Ayres,
Santa Fé, Córdoba, and Entre Rios, which is the richest in cereals, is also that in which the greatest number of small farms are to be found. The statistics for 1901-1902 show that out of 37,434 farms 13,150, or about 36 per cent., were worked by their owners; 18,819, or 50 per cent., by tenants; and 5465, or 14 per cent., by métayers—that is, tenants who give up from half to two-thirds of the crops to the owner of the land. Other more recent statistics, relating to the Province of Santa Fé, give the number of farmers owning their land at the time of the harvest as 6747, or 32 per cent., and the number of tenants as 14,227, or 68 per cent.
The majority of the farms, especially those cultivated by the owners, says the Investigación agricola, have an area varying from 60 to 250 acres. Farms held on lease or by payment of part of the harvest are usually larger, especially in the former case, and the work is done with greater expedition, but as a rule less perfectly and without the same stimulus. Farms varying from 750 to 1500 acres and more which employ day-labourers are still less numerous, since as a general thing nothing is gained by employing them. On the other hand, however, there are large farms whose owners in reality only supervise matters of administration, and which are divided among tenant-farmers or métayers, paying so much per cent, of the harvest, or a rent in kind, according to the crops and the conditions agreed upon. In such a case the proprietor or colonist is not actually an agriculturalist, but a business man, who more often than not has not sufficient knowledge to assume the scientific or even the rational direction of the operations on his estate.
Agricultural Products
Having considered the physical conditions of the Argentine soil, the regions given over to particular forms of agriculture, and the disposition of rural property, the moment has now come to consider what areas are at present respectively producing crops of various kinds from seed, comparing them not only with the area of each province, but also with the statistics of previous years. In making this inquiry, we have a valuable starting-point in the Censo agropecuario,
taken in the month of October 1888; the first serious undertaking of the kind ever attempted in the Republic under competent direction.[40]
[40] Cf. L’agriculture et l’élevage dans la République Argentine, d’après le recensement de la première quinzaine d’octobre 1888, by F. Latzina, printed by P. Mouillot, Paris, 1889.
In an introductory chapter the Director of this census says: “It is only eleven years since the products of Argentine agriculture have been greater than the country’s needs. For example, the quantities of wheat exported before 1878 were so small as to be negligible. Now we see that in eleven years we have reached a point at which we export 8,800,000 bushels of wheat (1887), 255,000 bushels of flour (1888), 14,470,000 bushels of maize (1887), and 3,248,000 bushels of linseed (1887). Those who will look into these figures will perhaps agree that they represent a great progress for so short a time.”