Export of Argentine maize on a large scale began in 1895. Flax-growing was not added to maize until 1900.
The heavy land requires a good deal of harrowing, and the weeding and harvesting of the maize give employment to a comparatively large staff. The estates are of moderate size, often only 50 hectares. Ownership was not divided at the period of colonization, the land, thanks to the breeders, having already acquired so high a value that the colonists could not buy it. On the lands which have been farmed out there has developed a rural, and often far from docile, proletariat. It is in the maize region that the worst agricultural strikes have taken place. The struggles of the owners and the colonists are the more prolonged because the sowing of the maize can be put back to the end of the spring without much harm being done. The adjoining zone of the Paraná produced some of the maiseros who have scattered over the north-west. But the modern colonies include, in addition, a large proportion of immigrants who have recently landed from Italy and Spain. The maize growers do not mix with the wheat-growers. Each group has its own area.
The increase of wheat-growing in the south dates only from 1898:
| Wheat Area (in kilometres). | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1895 | 1908 | |
| Alsina | 45 | 1,296 |
| Puan | 52 | 1,321 |
| Suarez | 104 | 978 |
| La Madrid | 75 | 249 |
| Pringles | 13 | 724 |
| Darrego | 885 | |
| Terr. de la Pampa | 1,731 | |
MAP IV.—DENSITY OF THE MAIZE CROP.
As it needs more heat and moisture than wheat, the maize does not go so far to the west and south. It is concentrated for export at the ports of the Rio de la Plata and the Paraná, especially at Rosario. The Argentine "corn belt," the chief maize area, extends back of Rosario and San Nicolas to beyond Casilda and Pergamino.
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Wheat first spread along the line from Buenos Aires to Bahía Blanca, west of the Sierra de la Ventana, then in the coastal district, east of Bahía Blanca. These two wheat-areas became connected after 1904, when the opening of the direct line from Olavarria to Buenos Aires facilitated the development of the intermediate region (Pringles-Laprida). From Bahía Blanca it spread to the west and north-west along the Toay line, and southward as far as Colorado on the coast. In the whole area of the Central Pampa it is still possible to distinguish two strata of immigrants, of different dates, one superimposed upon the other: the sheep-breeders and the farmers. Round Toay the contrast between the two elements of the population is even more striking, because the first pastoral colonization, which dates from 1890, was to a great extent the work of creole puntanos (from the San Luis province). The actual agricultural colonies, on the other hand, include recent European immigrants and colonists from other parts of the provinces of Buenos Aires and Entre Rios.