RAW PRODUCTS;
MANUFACTURED OR PARTLY MANUFACTURED MATERIAL AND BY-PRODUCTS.
Since the closing of English ports in 1901 to the importation of live cattle from Argentina, the trade in the export of live stock has fallen off considerably; the total value did not in 1908 amount to more than £568,966; Belgium took 65,224 sheep, Chili took 45,114 cattle and 14,394 sheep, Bolivia took 3,383 head of cattle and 10,676 sheep, and 16,000 asses and mules, while horses were imported into England, Africa, Portugal, Brazil, Uruguay, Chili, Bolivia, and Paraguay.
Exports of raw products, which include frozen and chilled beef and mutton, hides, sheepskins, wool, and such things as horsehair, tallow, jerked beef, etc., represented a value of £19,549,231 in 1908.
Manufactured or partly manufactured material, including prepared tallow, meat extracts, meat, butter, cheese, lard, dressed leather, etc., represented £2,454,760, whilst the by-products, including bones, dried blood, guano, waste fats, etc., were valued at £430,734. Thus, Argentina's total export from the cattle industry (after supplying her own needs) was over £23,000,000.
Argentina's live stock on hand when the last census was taken in May, 1908, was as follows:—
| Cattle | 29,116,625 |
| Sheep | 67,211,758 |
| Horses | 7,531,376 |
| Mules, swine, goats, and asses | 6,098,802 |
representing in value £129,369,628.
The favourite breed of cattle is the Shorthorn, and they comprise 84 per cent, of the classified breeding cows; the Herefords only figure out as 6 per cent., but, undoubtedly, a more careful and complete classification will lead to modifications in these figures, for at the present time no less than five and a-half million cows are returned as Criollo cattle, in other words, unimproved stock.
Not until the year 1885, when it became possible to send frozen meat to Europe, did estancieros pay serious attention to growing cattle for meat production, and now, with an ever-increasing quantity of land being placed under alfalfa, the Argentine Republic is fast becoming the leading factor in the production of meat to satisfy the world's consumption.