This last menace may now, however, be considered as past.
The Defensa Agricola does not only devote its attention to locusts. It possesses a highly trained scientific staff which combats the invasions of all the other insect pests which from time to time threaten the crops, vines or fruit and other trees and useful vegetation. It issues clear instructions as to the treatment to be applied in each case and punishes noncompliance with its orders by fines which it is empowered to inflict.
Agriculture has much for which to thank this Institution in respect of protection against pests; the danger from which was increasing with the importation of vines and fruit trees from other countries.
The Argentine organization is under the direct control of the Ministry of Agriculture[40]; an indefatigable Government Department the immensely wide sphere of whose work is ever increasing; Division being added to Division as need arises from the ever-increasing number of the branches of National Industry, whether agricultural or not. For instance, it is only quite lately that anything like complete official statistics have been obtainable in relation to internal manufactures. The country regarded itself, as it was regarded abroad, as purely agricultural in the broad sense including Live Stock production. Now these statistics are regularly issued by the “Division of Commerce and Industry” so admirably directed and watched over by Señor Ricardo Pillado; a veteran the list of whose valuable economic services to the State dates from the financial renaissance which followed the disastrous year 1891; in which renaissance he played a very leading part.
Señor Pillado was largely instrumental in the devising and carrying into execution of the drastic financial remedies rendered necessary by the culminating abuses of the Juarez Celman regime; and it is to his practical and patriotic genius that the Argentine statistical diagrams and many other statistics of that country reproduced in this book owe their existence and annual reappearances in the simple and striking forms which is their very salient feature.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF ARGENTINE AGRICULTURE, 1896-1913
------+---------+---------+---------+---------+-------------+---------- Years.| Wheat. | Linseed.| Maize. | Lucerne.| Other | Total. | | | | |cultivations.| ------+---------+---------+---------+---------+-------------+---------- 1896 |2,500,000| 360,000|1,400,000| 800,000| 510,000 | 5,570,000 1897 |2,600,000| 350,000|1,000,000| 900,000| 522,000 | 5,372,000 1898 |3,200,000| 332,788| 850,000|1,067,983| 533,000 | 5,983,771 1899 |3,250,000| 355,329|1,009,000|1,268,088| 545,000 | 6,427,417 1900 |3,379,749| 607,352|1,255,346|1,511,601| 557,000 | 7,311,048 1901 |3,296,066| 782,880|1,405,796|1,631,733| 567,000 | 7,638,475 1902 |3,695,343|1,307,196|1,801,644|1,730,163| 580,270 | 9,114,616 1903 |4,320,000|1,487,000|2,100,000|2,172,511| 606,000 |10,685,511 1904 |4,903,124|1,082,890|2,287,040|2,503,384| 648,000 |11,424,438 1905 |5,675,293|1,022,782|2,717,300|2,983,643| 682,443 |13,081,461 1906 |5,692,268|1,020,715|2,851,300|3,537,211| 796,099 |13,897,593 1907 |5,759,987|1,391,467|2,719,260|3,612,000| 1,129,078 |14,612,792 1908 |6,063,100|1,534,300|2,973,900|3,687,200| 1,572,063 |15,830,563 1909 |5,836,500|1,455,600|3,005,000|4,706,530| 3,772,042 |18,775,672 1910 |6,253,180|1,503,820|3,215,350|5,400,580| 3,994,152 |20,367,082 1911 |5,897,000|1,630,000|3,422,000|5,630,100| 4,304,589 |21,883,689 1912 |6,918,450|1,733,330|3,830,000|5,955,000| 4,550,946 |22,987,726 1913 |6,573,540|1,779,350|4,152,000|6,690,100| 4,896,736 |24,091,726 ------+---------+---------+---------+---------+-------------+-----------