Agrarian development of Argentina in the second half of the XIXth – the beginning of the XXth centuries

Abstract

The work is devoted to the final stage in the formation of agrarian regime in Argentina. The foundation for contempo-rary Argentina was built at that time On the Argentina pampas a significant change took place. A land that had produced cat-tle useful only for hides, tallow and salted beef was trans-formed into cultivated fields and pastures where fences closed stock into alfalfa pastures. The rise of the farming and sheep ranching accompanied this shift in the cattle economy. Frigorificos – plants for production of chilled beef made it possible to be sold in markets of Great Britain. Argentina be-came one of the world’s leading exporters of wheat, corn, beef mutton and wool. It indicates that behind this economic accomplishment lies land structure – the predominance of large ownership – latifundia. Argentina had no homestead act or other long-seal land distribution plan that wood root immi-grants to the nation by granting them ownership of the soil. The Argentina landed elites owned most of the good land with the result that immigrants became tenants on short term leas-es. The farming developed primary as servant to the predominant sheep and cattle interests. The result was a pampa without settler filled with migrant tenant farmers a land exploited but not possessed. The predominance of latifundia and the land tenant system retarded the intensification of agrarian sector: Argentina failed to build a modern agrarian economy.

Keywords

• argentina
• pampas
• frigorifico
• latifundia
• land-tenant system
• immigration.