Livestock production and technology
La producción ganadera sirve como punto de partida para reflexionar sobre la tecnología, el desarrollo y el trato que una sociedad da a sus trabajadores y científicos.
A journalist asked Maarten de Heer, director of the Royal Dutch Dairy Industry Federation, how he explained the prosperity of his country’s dairy industry. He replied: “First of all, I think it is because Dutch dairy cows are happy creatures. The land produces good pasture, the climate is pleasant, although we must keep them indoors during winter, and farmers have centuries of experience behind them.” Each Dutch cow produces six thousand kilograms of butterfat a year [figure to be checked against the original]. Anyone who has traveled there and admired those animals’ full udders in their pastures from the highway will not find the figure extraordinary. What they may find curious, however, is hearing that happiness is responsible for such abundance. And, if inclined to let their thoughts wander, they may wonder how happy Argentine cows are by comparison and why the people of our beautiful country seem so unhappy.
Our dairy cows produce far less than their Dutch counterparts. The land here also provides good pasture, and the climate is even more pleasant—enough to make winter housing unnecessary—yet average production does not reach one-third of the Dutch figure. Whatever the reason, then, our variously colored dairy cows—Fernández Moreno wrote this miniature pastoral poem: “One little cow / has painted the hills / one little cow / and makes the earth beautiful”—seem less happy. If we were satisfied with that answer and turned our thoughts toward the history of our livestock industry in general, the images would hardly be bucolic.
That history would take us from the conquistadors’ feral cattle to the brutal scenes of The Slaughter Yard; from animals slaughtered merely for their tongues to the montonera wars settled with horned cattle; from the tallow and salted meat of Rosas’s cattle operations and the beneficiaries of emphyteutic land tenure to the Centennial, when Banchs, Lugones and Darío competed in their hymns of praise to plows and crops; from the day in 1935 when Lisandro de la Torre delivered his “I accuse” against foreign meatpacking companies to our present of clandestine slaughterhouses and unscrupulous businesspeople. Once, in the Senate, a landowner referred to livestock farming as “our mother industry.” Juan B. Justo rose to reply: “Mother industry?… Great-grandmother industry, an obsolete industry, one that holds the country back from its necessary future.” Those socialists resented the formidable obstacle that Buenos Aires’s livestock interests had posed to the settlement of rural areas by immigrant farmers. There have even been extremists who, for various impassioned reasons, once proposed as a “final solution” to Argentina’s problems a collective barbecue in Plaza de Mayo lasting until [illegible passage in the transcription].
The time of Argentine beef as a symbol of national pride has passed. Those postwar days are captured in the anecdote of a newly arrived European who sat down at “La Cabaña” and, seeing the enormous steak placed before him, exclaimed, to the smug smile of his Buenos Aires host: “Poland’s ration for a month!” Technology advanced, Europe became a major producer, eating habits changed, cholesterol became a threat, and “fitting” arrived [term to be checked against the original]… Exports have declined so much in importance that a rise of just one percentage point in interest on the foreign debt cancels out the value of an entire year’s meat exports. Fortunately, we have had some good news: foot-and-mouth disease has been brought under control. Nevertheless, we will continue longing for a modern, environmentally sound industry that can become a pillar of development in this country with its extraordinary natural advantages. Let us talk about Argentines and happiness. According to the Dutchman, the formula for his dairy cows’ happiness consists of good food, a good climate and good treatment. Metaphorically, the good treatment they receive is made up of resources Dutch society itself has brought together: health, education, work and science. This is a people who treat themselves well. One need only look, while passing through, at the comfortable houses, windows with embroidered curtains and flowerpots, clusters of little blond heads in every park, and peaceful cyclists in their own lanes to realize that they are happy.
That Argentines, by contrast, are unhappy is even easier to establish. It would be enough to watch the television news: the marches and drums, protests, insults and tears, the endless sociopolitical tragicomedy displayed without taste or restraint. But an even more distressing phenomenon is emigration. Nobody knows how many young people are leaving us, but we have all seen the lines at foreign consulates and the crowds at Ezeiza airport. We all know the hopes of our own children and those of others. The scientific sector in particular, faced with government neglect, laments an ever-growing loss of talent. How many are leaving Balseiro, the universities, CONICET and CNEA? How many talented people in their most productive years? They leave because they are unhappy. And they are unhappy because they are not treated well. Menander said: “Where I am well, there is my homeland.” Goethe corrected him: “Where I am needed, there is my homeland”… Our compatriots’ ability to establish themselves and even excel abroad is proverbial. What young Argentines lack here is fulfilling work.
When newspapers announce preparations for the Rural Exhibition, many people begin to feel excited. They are the ones who follow the ritual of the carriage, the gold braid and the military bands—do you remember General Onganía entering the arena amid grenadiers, flags and military fanfares when he had just shut down the Faculty of Sciences?—the mounted police officers’ salutes, the secular prayers to the generous pampas, and the parade of gleaming, magnificent bulls. Those bulls at the exhibition may be happy, but they are a minority. These pampas masses prompted a patriot who dreamed of happy Argentines, and believed the country’s greatest capital was its people rather than its cows, to say things such as: “If the champion bull disappeared on the opening day of the Rural Exhibition, there would surely be a national uproar.
“And if a great breeding bull disappeared every week, it would be a catastrophe, and the Armed Forces would intervene to defend the national patrimony. But every day, scientists, technicians, artists and workers from the widest range of specialties leave the country. They constitute the nation’s fundamental capital, yet this causes nobody to lose sleep. For almost four decades, amid general indifference, the country has been bleeding away its competent, trained and active people as a consequence of a conspiracy of mediocrities.” A vast number of brilliant compatriots continue “voting with their feet” for countries abroad. They do so because they do not feel needed here, because our ruling classes have been deaf to the voices of the great figures—the Sarmientos, the Agustín Álvarezes, the Joaquín V. Gonzálezes and the Martínez Estradas—who longed desperately for a different country, a country of well-treated and happy Argentines.
