6. AGRICULTURE. Under this title we shall endeavor to treat of Argentine agri culture as the great importance of the subject deserves, in the broadest sense of the word, with such economic, geographic and even his toric implications as are for the sincerity and thoroughness of our study, really indispensable.
The area of land under cultivation is more than 95,000 square miles, and its chief products are as follows: Wheat, more than 105,000,000 bushels; oats, 61,000,000 bushels; maize, 190, 000,000 bushels; linseed, 40,000,000 bushels; sugar, more than 280,000 tons. Analyzing the statistics for recent years we find that between 16,000,000 and 17,000,000 acres are devoted to wheat, about 16,000,000 acres to alfalfa, 10,000, 000 to 11,000,000 acres to Indian corn (maize), over 4,000,000 acres to linseed, and over 3,000, 000 acres to oats, the other crops being barley, sugar cane, _grapes, nce, potatoes, cotton, to bacco, etc. But the fact is to be noted that of the somewhat more than 1,000,000 square miles embraced in the republic more than one-third (about 334,000) are arable. In other words, 241,000 square miles of the arable regions re main to be brought under cultivation. It is therefore proper to regard the present output of cereals, despite its unquestionable impor tance, as only a promise of the vastly greater crops which will be secured when the limit of Argentina's potential productivity has been even approximately attained. Moreover the agricul tural system accepted and practised in Argen tina at the present time is as far as possible removed from the intensive system, its aim be ing simply and frankly, and perhaps with over emphasis of facility, to obtain the maximum of profit with a minimum of capital and labor. Compare it with the agricultural system of Canada. We may call the former the latter intensive. Thus, in Canada the farms of less than 200 acres constitute 88 per cent of the total of holdings of rural property; in Ar gentina the holdings are relatively large and it appears that farms which best respond to the present conditions of agriculture there are those of 500 to 750 acres. The capital required
for farming operations in Canada is $59.25 gold per hectare (2.47 acres) including the value of the land, buildings and machinery; in Argen tina, $27.70 gold per hectare. The amount pro duced in a given area by the Argentine farmer can be greatly increased whenever it becomes more profitable to cultivate intensely than simply to extend the margin of cultivation.
In addition to the arable regions we have to consider a second one-third part of the entire area of the republic — roughly speaking 333,000 to 335,000 square miles that can be utilized for sheep or cattle and to a large extent already have been assigned to the stock-raising indus try. In fact live-stock has been, from the early years of Spanish colonization, one of the two principal sources from which the wealth of the inhabitants has been derived; and the figures given in a recent census are, for the entire country: 80,000,000 sheep, 29,500,000 bo vine cattle, 9,700,000 horses, 452,000 goats, 3,050,000 pigs and 920,000 asses and mules — the estimated total value being $700,000,000 gold. The nucleus of the supply of live-stock was derived mainly from Peru and Spain in the 16th and 17th centuries.
The remaining areas are commonly assumed to be (in the agricultural sense) unproductive; and as an illustration or the most striking ex ample of the worthless section, it has been cus tomary in the past to mention Argentine Pata gonia. But in the light of recent investigations and practical experiments we are enabled to correct that erroneous impression; and it is reasonable to expect that the whole subject of Argentine agricultural expansion will be re vised when essential new facts, which would have been called heresies even a decade or so ago, are arrayed against very old but wholly unwarranted prejudice. Our task at the moment is to set forth such essential facts.