The comparison between the two great industries of the Argentine is summed up in the following fact: a property comprising 25,000 acres of pasture can be put into working order and managed by a staff of ten to twelve men. For an estate of 1500 acres under culture, one may estimate that forty to fifty persons, grouped in families, may easily live upon the soil and prosper. We may perceive by this the great superiority of agriculture from the point of view of the general interest of the country. It demands and supports a denser population; it permits the grouping of this population in villages and cities, it creates, in proportion, with a smaller capital, a great wealth of produce; in short, it contributes on the one hand towards increasing the wealth of the country by participating largely in its exports, and on the other it increases its power of consumption, by absorbing a greater number of imported products.
Thus the evolution of the Argentine towards agriculture constitutes a real progress, and if the country continues to follow the same path, its development will assuredly not be arrested by lack of soil. The 35 to 37 millions of acres already reclaimed, and at present under culture, represent at the most a tenth of the total area of cultivable land, which is estimated roughly at 375 millions of acres, of which at least 125 millions are perfectly adapted to the culture of cereals. The four Provinces of Buenos Ayres, Santa Fé, Córdoba, Entre Rios, and the Territory of Pampa Central alone contain some 32-1/2 millions of land under the plough, while there remains about 170 millions of acres of land which is just as fertile, and which without manuring or preparation would yield a splendid crop from the first year of tilth.
This transformation into an agricultural country has already borne fruit. The figures relating to external commerce, compared with the world’s statistics of cereal production, show the present position of the Argentine among the great exporting nations.
It is the Argentine which to-day, after the United States, occupies the second rank in the matter of cereal exports; and this is a significant event in the economic history of the nations, to which the attention of Europe should be directed. At the present moment the Argentine, with her 4 million tons of corn available for exportation, is not as yet mistress of the grain markets, but she represents, to those countries whose production is insufficient, a notable reserve, which has become indispensable since the United States, Canada, and Russia seem to have reached their limit of exportation.