While agricultural colonization has been an aid to pastoral colonization in the north-west of Buenos Aires, it tends to displace breeding, or restrict its sphere, in the north-east and the south. Maize-growing started on the banks of the Parana, where it was already paramount in 1889, between Campana (north of Buenos Aires) and San Nicolas. In 1895 it advanced up the Parana as far as the Santa Fe province (Constitucion) and spread over the interior for some sixty miles in the Salto department. In the next few years it made rapid progress toward the west and north-west, covering the departments of Pergamino, Rojas, and Colon, and part of General Lopez, San Lorenzo, and Constitucion in the province of Santa Fe. ---------------+-----------------+------------------ | Maize Area. | Flax Area. |-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+------ | 1889| 1895| 1908| 1889| 1895| 1908 ---------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+------ Campana | 67 | 45 | 22| 15 | 31 | 17 Baradero | 339 | 260 | 291| 26 | 78 | 173 S. Pedro | 398 | 353 | 420| 5 | 73 | 235 Arrecifes | 124 | 126 | 155| 15 | 50 | 265 Salto | 16 | 326 | 236| 13 | 3 | 75 Gal. Lopez } | 51 |{373 |1,538| -- | 70 | 752 Constitucion } | |{575 | 736| -- | 270 | 404 Pergamino | 168 | 160 | 340| 50 | 30 | 275 Rojas | 86 | 81 | 247| 4 | 23 | 275 Colon | -- | 44 | 126| -- | 14 | 78 S. Lorenzo | 178 | 150 |1,169| 11 | 36 | 450 Caseros | -- | 83 | 990| -- | 13 | 319 ---------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+------ Export of Argentine maize on a large scale began in 1895. Flax-growing was not added to maize until 1900. The heavy land requires a good deal of harrowing, and the weeding and harvesting of the maize give employment to a comparatively large staff. The estates are of moderate size, often only 50 hectares. Ownership was not divided at the period of colonization, the land, thanks to the breeders, having already acquired so high a value that the colonists could not buy it. On the lands which have been farmed out there has developed a rural, and often far from docile, proletariat. It is in the maize region that the worst agricultural strikes have taken place. The struggles of the owners and the colonists are the more prolonged because the sowing of the maize can be put back to the end of the spring without much harm being done. The adjoining zone of the Parana produced some of the _maiseros_ who have scattered over the north-west. But the modern colonies include, in addition, a large proportion of immigrants who have recently landed from Italy and Spain. The maize growers do not mix with the wheat-growers. Each group has its own area. The increase of wheat-growing in the south dates only from 1898: