It is more than probable that by 1920 Argentina will be able to export, as the result of agricultural work, more than L100,000,000 worth of produce per annum.  It is interesting to note that, as the present figures reveal, allowing for a population of 6,500,000 and an agricultural produce export of L48,335,432, each individual in Argentina has sent abroad, after producing enough from the land to keep himself, goods to the value of nearly L8.

The diagram facing this page shows what has been accomplished by Argentina in the last ten years.

[Illustration:  Diagram of value in L sterling of the total exports of Argentina 1900-1909.]

In actual money value the exportation of wheat, linseed, oats, maize, other grain, flour, bran, and middlings is, in round figures, as follows:—­

1900   L15,485,000
1901    14,319,000
1902    13,634,000
1903    21,050,000
1904    30,065,000
1905    34,047,000
1906    31,530,000
1907    32,818,000
1908    48,335,000
1909    46,100,000

Cattle.

The value derived from the cattle industry and its allied produce is of great importance to the Argentine Republic.  The exports from this industry may be divided into four heads, namely:—­

Live animals;

Raw products;

Manufactured or partly manufactured material and by-products.

Since the closing of English ports in 1901 to the importation of live cattle from Argentina, the trade in the export of live stock has fallen off considerably; the total value did not in 1908 amount to more than L568,966; Belgium took 65,224 sheep, Chili took 45,114 cattle and 14,394 sheep, Bolivia took 3,383 head of cattle and 10,676 sheep, and 16,000 asses and mules, while horses were imported into England, Africa, Portugal, Brazil, Uruguay, Chili, Bolivia, and Paraguay.

Exports of raw products, which include frozen and chilled beef and mutton, hides, sheepskins, wool, and such things as horsehair, tallow, jerked beef, etc., represented a value of L19,549,231 in 1908.

Manufactured or partly manufactured material, including prepared tallow, meat extracts, meat, butter, cheese, lard, dressed leather, etc., represented L2,454,760, whilst the by-products, including bones, dried blood, guano, waste fats, etc., were valued at L430,734.  Thus, Argentina’s total export from the cattle industry (after supplying her own needs) was over L23,000,000.

Argentina’s live stock on hand when the last census was taken in May, 1908, was as follows:—­

Cattle ... ... ... 29,116,625
Sheep ... ... ... 67,211,758
Horses ... ... ... 7,531,376
Mules, swine,
goats, and asses 6,098,802

representing in value L129,369,628.

The favourite breed of cattle is the Shorthorn, and they comprise 84 per cent, of the classified breeding cows; the Herefords only figure out as 6 per cent., but, undoubtedly, a more careful and complete classification will lead to modifications in these figures, for at the present time no less than five and a-half million cows are returned as Criollo cattle, in other words, unimproved stock.