ARGENTINA CATTLE RAISING Great Opportunities for Enter, prising Americans Who Have q Sufficient Capital. BY HERBERT W. MUMFORD,' UniTeriity of Illinois- Generally speaking but few citizens of the United States appreciate the importance im-portance of Argentine as a cattle-raiding country. It Is not to be wondered nt that North Americana, with vasJ areas of fertile soli only partially oo-cupiod oo-cupiod and developed, have failed to study conditions In the southern republic, repub-lic, and consequently have almost universally uni-versally lost sight of the great opportunities oppor-tunities which have been presented there for beef production. The ranches, or "cstancias," as they arc called, are extensive. Some Idea can be gathered from the fact that In the province of Santa. Fc 64 per cent of the area is owned In tracts of 12.500 acres or more. Twenty to forty thousand acres owned by one man is by no means unusual. un-usual. This, of course, means that cattle cat-tle production is carried on on an extensive ex-tensive scale. All parts of Argentina are, of course, not equally well adapted to cattle raising, rais-ing, both on account of temperature v ,1 1... 4, .O .U I ... I. mill j'iuuiiiim ui mi? laii'J. ii nil)) DC said, however, that there Is no grain feeding of cattle, in Argentina, even among ranchmen who produce well-bred well-bred cattle Intended for the export trade. The native grasses, together with alfalfa, arc tho mainstay of tho beef producer. Tho best cattle country la located on the best arable land In the part oi Argentina-located in tho temperate zone. This Includes the province of Buenos Aires, the southern half of Santa Fe and Cordoba and all of the provinces of Corrientes and Entre Rlos. The southern part of tho republic, more frequently spoken of as Patagonia, Pata-gonia, is for the most part a dry. cold country, in many parts of which th? soil 13 far from fertile, while the northern north-ern end of Argentina lies In the tropics and the climate Is too hot for the successful suc-cessful rearing of well-bred cattle. Toward tho west the country ' Is mountainous and areas suitable for either agriculture or cattle raising are not large. Tho number of beef cattle in Argentina Ar-gentina at the present time is variously estimated at twenty-five to thirty million, mil-lion, while the sheep population is from seventy to a hundred million. Tho entire area of the Argentine Republic Re-public is about one-third of the area of the United States, exclusive of Alaska. The. cattle live out of doors throughout the year and are strangers to barns or even open sheds. It would be a suprise to many cattlemen cattle-men in the United States to sea large numbers of grats-fat bullocks going to market which are as well bred as any , to be found in the United State. I The ranchmen, or "estancleros," who, for the most part, are very wealthy, have bought the best breeding cattlo which Great Britain has produced in sufllclently large numbers during tho past few years to have materially raised , the standard of the general stock of the country. Naturally in some of the newer and more frontier locations the old "criollo" stock r till predoml-nn predoml-nn les. There are in Argentina approximately approximate-ly 210.000.000 acres of arable land, three-fourths of which is a vast plain, a very large part of which is very fertile. There are ten or eleven million acres in the Argentine Republic which are capable of irrigation. Some very extensive irrigation plants are already in operation. The small population of Argentina, being only five and one-half millions, and the very large production of beef and mutton, make It necessary to give considerable attention to the export trade. The mutton is all exported in a frozen state, while the beef goes as either chilled or frozen beef. .