Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
agrarian laborers, and the increasing reliance of Europe on foreign
grains. Argentines imported the latest farming technologies—machin-
ery, barbed wire, and windmills—and thus transformed rural produc-
tion. A British visitor returned to Argentina in 1900 after a 20-year
absence to notice “an entirely new feature; the sentinel-like forms of
the windmills now used all over Argentina for pumping water into the
reservoirs that supply the houses or feed the drinking-trough; tapering
columns of open ironwork some 30 feet [high], surmounted by the
untiring vanes” (Larden 1911, 35).
In the 1860s and 1870s, agricultural colonies of European settlers
first began the cultivation of grains in the provinces of Santa Fe and
Entre Ríos. Thereafter, wheat cultivation shifted to the more fertile
terrain of Buenos Aires province, where landowners altered their
operations in response to market pressures. Tenant workers plowed
up the cattle ranges and sowed wheat crops for several years. They
then planted alfalfa and returned the land to cattlemen in the form
of improved pastures. By 1910, Buenos Aires had become the leading
province in wheat production, cultivating more than one-third of the
15 million acres in the entire nation.
The development of grain carried with it the necessity of improving
the commercial system and of using new technologies in farming and
food processing. Imports of wire fencing increased as cultivation spread
to the cattle areas of Buenos Aires province. In the years before World
War I, more than 89,000 tons of fence wire passed through Argentine
customs each year, and the country also began importing large numbers
of reapers and threshers. Grain elevators improved storage and port
facilities, and the quantity of wheat transported in burlap bags, which
produced handling problems that backed up valuable railway cars dur-
ing the harvests, was rapidly reduced. Soon flour mills sprang up in
the port cities of Buenos Aires, Bahía Blanca, and Rosario. By 1912,
Argentina milled all its domestically consumed flour and still exported
145,500 tons, principally to other Latin American nations.
The story of Argentine meat exports is also one of technological
change that allowed the country to capture large world markets. Salted
and dried beef had been an important agricultural export since 1820
but was not popular among European consumers. Finally, in 1876,
a successful experiment with ammonia cooling and compressed air
refrigeration signaled a major technological breakthrough. It took 20
years to perfect the processing and marketing of chilled and frozen
meats, during which Argentine
estancieros
were replacing their native
longhorns with English shorthorn stock. The old
saladeros
were closed
