“AMAZING ARGENTINE”

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 554, 5 January 1929, Page 23

“AMAZING ARGENTINE”

VAST POSSIBILITIES COUNTRY OF BIG HOLDINGS The amazing possibilties for development in the Argentine were stressed by a well-known Australian pastoralist who passed through Auckland the other day nearing the end of a world tour. A Pressman asked what chance there was of New Zealand and Australia usurping Argentine’s hold on the meat market. “No, there is no chance of New Zealand or Australia producing an equal quality of meat in any quantitjy,” was the reply. “The area of our country which will feed stock and bring it to such a state of perfection is infinitesimally small compared with what the Argentine has available. On one ranch that we visited there was as much lucerne grown as is grown in the whole State of Queensland. “But it is not only the lucerne alone; there arc natural grasses there that will fatten stock right out, without using any special feeding.

“The soil,” he went on, “is amazingly fertile. They grow a tremendous amount of maize, and they have great tracts of rich country yet untouched. The Argentine is going to be the future grain producing country of the world. The reason for this is that the value of land is rising there so fast that cattle will very soon cease to he the economic proposition that they are at present, and therefore the land will have to be cultivated more intensively, and made to produce large crops of wheat, maize, and so forth. “There is much of the country still in its virgin state?” “The western part of the country is only half developed. They are building, and keeping on building, railways, and as it is opened out the country will become more thickly populated. At the present time the trouble is not only the need for labour but for large capital if you go in for farming, because you cannot buy a small farm and make it pay. “An Italian peasant will rent a small farm, and he will have a hut of wood, and rushes covered with mud, and live in it for three or four years and then manage to rent a bit more land. In these days it is from Italy that the great hulk of the immigrants come.” Concluding, the traveller waxed enthusiastic about the cattle that are being reared in the Argentine, and the enormous scale upon which cattle ranching is conducted. There were, he said, ranches upon which scores of thousands of cattle were running. In some cases over 100,000 head. The favourite breed is the Shorthorn, and after that the Herefords and Aberdeen Angus. Shorthorns constitute about 80 per cent, of the cattle being reared.

A movement for the formation of Junior Farmers’ Clubs has been taken up enthusiastically in several farming centres of New South Wales. Already three clubs have been formed, and by the co-operation of the Education and Agricultural Departments teaching will supplement practical work.