In the wheat-belt of Tchernoziom, the black earth is all in cultivation, and its extent cannot be further increased. Fertile though this soil may be, and although its depth is from 12 to 40 inches, the results amount to no more than four or five grains of wheat for each grain sown. The last harvest gave about 5·54 bushels per acre, while the average in France is 20 bushels.
These results are due chiefly to the poverty and ignorance of the Russian peasant; it often happens that his wheat crop no longer belongs to him, having been sequestrated by the tax-gatherer in payment of unpaid taxes. On the other hand, the Russian peasant cannot procure agricultural machinery, the price of which is increased by exaggerated tariffs.[51] He cannot even obtain draught animals, his wretched resources not allowing him to procure them.
[Footnote 51: More: when it is provided for him he frequently will not use it; or it undergoes a series of remarkable accidents, so that the harvest has to be gathered by hand. This is more especially the case where he is reaping another’s harvest, when his object is to ensure the employment of more hands. He is unable to understand that machinery means wealth and development. It is only fair to say that it seldom does in Russia, as he cannot easily get more land of his own, and his master’s estate is often hemmed in by others.——[TRANS.]]
If to these factors we add the progressive exhaustion of the soil, we see that the production of Russian wheat for export is very near its limit; the more so as the home consumption of wheat tends to increase with the economic development of the country. We can hardly wish otherwise than that these peasant farmers, habituated to a life of poverty, should themselves consume some of the wheat they produce, instead of contenting themselves with rye.
Let us now compare this picture of Russian production to that presented by the Argentine.
What is it that is responsible for the superiority of the Argentine Pampa over the Russian steppes? It is the inexhaustible fertility of a virgin soil, which produces abundant crops, without necessitating artificial enrichment, nor even the system of the rotation of crops. The soil yields harvests of 20 bushels to the acre, without exhaustion, producing for many years in succession, as it is doing now in Chubut, in the south of Buenos Ayres, and in Córdoba, while the yield of the Russian harvests is only 5·5 bushels.