The density of the herd is slight in the maize belt. It is considerable in the centre and east of the Pampean region, which supply the refrigerators with pedigree stock of good weight. The density is considerable also in the north of Mesopotamia, but the cattle there are less valuable and are taken by the saladeros of the Uruguay. The presence of the tick, which inoculates cattle with Texas fever, is the chief obstacle to the improvement of the herd in the north of Argentina.

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The lucerne spread southward and south-westward from this point; and the improvement of the herds kept pace with it. I have shown elsewhere how this improvement was checked north of a line along the course of the Paraná, the northern frontier of the Constitución and General Lopez departments, in the province of Santa Fé and on the Rio Cuarto, and in the Córdoba province, by the presence of the garrapate, which inoculates the cattle with a dreaded disease, Texas fever. The creole cattle are immunized against the garrapate, but pedigree cattle quickly succumb to it. In order to protect the southern zone, where the garrapate does not reproduce, the Argentine Government imposes severe restrictions on the transport of cattle from north to south; the cattle have to have disinfectant baths at the frontier-stations. This cuts pastoral Argentina in two. While the Durham cattle of the south are intended for the refrigerators, the creole cattle of the north still supply the saladeros, which have disappeared from Buenos Aires, but survive on the Uruguay. Yet the advantages of crossing with European breeds are such that the northern breeders, in spite of the risk and the expense, have not given up all hope of accomplishing it. The transformation of the herd, however, is bound to be very slow. Pedigree breeders are brought from the south and kept in the stable. Their progeny, born on the spot, resist Texas fever better and can be put out to pasture. There has been more progress in the contaminated zone on the right bank of the Paraná than in Entre Rios and Corrientes. Pedigree animals have been introduced at Santa Fé, not only in the region of the colonies, but further north, in the extreme northern corner of the Pampa (San Cristobal department), colonized by ranchers from the north of Buenos Aires and the south of Santa Fé, who were ousted by the progress of maize. They have brought with them to the new lands the cultivation of lucerne and the methods they followed on their former property. At Corrientes, on the other hand, breeding is an historic industry. The staff of the ranches is indigenous. The pastoral traditions are unchanged.

When we study the variations in the numbers of cattle in different parts of the Pampa, by comparing the results of recent Censuses we find that the number has risen rapidly since 1895 in the whole of the eastern area, north of the Sierra de Tandil. The increase is particularly conspicuous north of the Rio Salado, in the dairy district. (Mean density in 1915, 40 to 60 horned cattle per square kilometre.) In the south-west region (wheat belt) the density has always been low (12 per square kilometre), and it shows no tendency to increase. In the north and western region of Buenos Aires (lucerne belt) there has been a rapid increase, especially between 1895 and 1908 (creation of the lucerne farms), and it has not been interrupted since (density 50 to the square kilometre). There is the same increase in the whole area of the lucerne farms in the Córdoba, Santa Fé, and San Luis provinces, where the herds doubled between 1895 and 1908. Only two regions have suffered a reduction: the agricultural area of the centre (Chacabuco, Chivilcoy), where there has been a decrease since 1895, and the maize district (north of Buenos Aires), where cattle-rearing did not diminish until after 1908.

Agriculture had begun to develop by the end of the eighteenth century in the district round Buenos Aires. D'Azara admits the enormous preponderance of breeding, but mentions that the right bank of the Paraná exported flour to the left bank, which was exclusively pastoral. Barrero also observes that between the belt of orchards and lucerne fields, about a league in width, which surrounded Buenos Aires, and the area of the ranches, which did not begin for six or eight leagues, there was an agricultural belt, the district of the chacras de pan llevar. The main crop was wheat, and the tillage was chiefly done in the rich soils at the bottom of the valleys, which are called cañadas in the local dialect (cañada de Moron, cañada de Rio Lujan, etc.).

It was, however, not at Buenos Aires, but in the Santa Fé province, that modern agricultural colonization began in the nineteenth century. It goes back to the foundation (in 1854) of the colony of Esperanza, west of Santa Fé, from which it was separated by the strip of forest which follows the course of the Salado. European immigrants—Swiss, French, and Piedmontese—had settled there. The early years of colonization at Santa Fé were difficult, and the colonies did not begin to develop rapidly until after 1870. About that date we can distinguish three nuclei of agricultural colonization at Santa Fé. The first group of colonies was settled in the north, on the bank of the Paraná. In the centre the Esperanza group advanced steadily westward. A third group of colonies lay along the Central Argentine railway from Rosario to Córdoba.

The Esperanza colonists had at first grown maize, but the prosperity of the colonies was mainly due to wheat. Zeballos, who visited the colonies in 1882, describes them as a vast lake of wheat. Wheat predominates, not only in the department of Las Colonias, west of Santa Fé, where it survives in full strength, but further north, at Garay, whence it has since been displaced by flax and earth-nuts, and in the south, round Rosario, in the belt which is now given up to maize. It is for the wheat that the mills of Carcaraña and the granaries of Rosario have been built. The land sown with wheat at Santa Fé rose in 1882 to 102,000 hectares out of a total of 127,000 hectares of cultivated land.[97] By 1889 the area of wheat was quadrupled. It spread like a drop of oil, reaching Rafäela and Castellanos on the west. In 1895 the advance was still more rapid. Wheat-growing has crossed the Córdoba frontier, and spread round San Francisco and east of Mar Chiquita (departments of San Justo and Marcos Juarez). The agricultural regions in the centre of the Santa Fé province and those of the Central Argentine have met, and the wheat has invaded the whole of the San Martin department. It extends even south of the old colonies of the Central Argentine toward the south-west of Santa Fé, in the General Lopez department.