It has to be admitted that some areas are subject to drought, and this and other evils have to be taken into consideration when reviewing the agricultural growth of a country like Argentina, which lives by its produce, and which in 1912 exported £36,000,000 worth of live-stock products and £53,000,000 worth of agricultural products. Given good years, the estanciero in average country makes 30 per cent. on the year. He can afford to have one bad year in three and yet be prosperous. But although districts suffer, the area of the country is so vast that losses are swamped in general prosperity.
| The irons are heated by fire made of bones of dead cattle. |
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Putting cattle through the chute. BRANDING CALVES ON AN ESTANCIA. |
As the older countries of the world concern themselves with national defence, Argentina has established a Department of Agricultural Defence, chiefly to fight the plague of locusts, which can eat out a whole district in a single night. I recall in Cordoba Province seeing in the distance what looked like a cloud of smoke. It was a storm of locusts, so dense as it passed that midday was reduced to twilight. The locust blights the land—it is the enemy. The locust is the thing which makes the farmer shudder. When it comes it not only devours every blade of grass within miles, but it lays its eggs in untold millions. The pest has to be destroyed. The Government readily assists localities to destroy the ova. The route of the swarms from the tropical north is known. The telegraph tells of the progress. When they land, the countryside turns out and catches them by the cartload. Sometimes the district in which they have settled is fired. The whole zone where eggs have been planted is ploughed. Animals are driven forth to trample the pest. The Government has in its possession over 20,000,000 yards of metallic barriers to make a line of defence, and when a swarm is penned it is suffocated, burnt, or trampled. The Government not only has its inspectors out, is ever ready to meet and repel the locust invasion from Brazil and Bolivia with suitable appliances, but gives financial assistance to those who help in the extermination. The Argentines are determined to stop this pest. The way they are setting about the work is evidence of their earnestness.
The point I specially desire to make, however, is that farming in Argentina is not all casual, but is becoming a developed national industry. There are many things to criticise about the Government; there is maladministration and there is peculation. But that so much has been accomplished, notwithstanding these drawbacks, accentuates the wonders of progress.