This is a fascinating comparative study of international competition. Argentina’s wheat exports represented about 12 to 25 percent of the world wheat market between 1900 and 1937, but declined to about 4 to 7 percent in the following four decades, well below the levels attained by Canada. Why? According to Carl Solberg, the answer lies in the “solid institutional structure that [Canadian] prairie grain growers and the Canadian state established prior to 1930,” and, by contrast, in “decades of neglect … [that] left pampa farming in no position to expand production” (p. 232). The late Dr. Solberg, a specialist in the history of Argentina, has written an extended essay on the role of the state in the development of two wheat economies. Based largely on secondary literature, his illuminating work at once challenges some of the implications of dependency theory for Argentine economic history and attempts to modify the influential conclusions of Vernon C. Fowke concerning the relative weakness of Canadian farmers in the shaping of Canadian agricultural policy.
At the heart of Solberg’s argument is an emphasis on government policy. He claims that the Argentine government, dominated by a wealthy cattle-raising landed elite, was convinced that “the free and unregulated operation of market economics would bring the fastest possible development to Argentina” (p. 15). The result was disastrous: “the absence of any comprehensive government policy meant that property ownership remained highly concentrated, that the educational system was primitive, that the roads were abominable, and that the agricultural marketing system was left in the hands of grasping grain merchants” (p. 20). Southern European immigrants who did not become citizens and rented farms on short-term contracts, Solberg asserts, lacked the commitment to the land, the material expectations, and the political influence that might have led to agrarian reforms.
Solberg’s picture of prairie Canada contrasts sharply with this sketch of Argentina. By basing its policy on the rapid naturalization of northern Europeans and on family farm ownership, the Canadian government created a vigorous agrarian community that won numerous concessions in policy, established strong cooperatives, and encouraged further research and development. The simultaneous Canadian government decision to sustain infant industries by means of a high tariff was part of an integrated national development policy—eastern industry, western grain production, railways to serve both—that demonstrated the virtues of government intervention in the economy. Solberg’s discussion of Canadian history is old-fashioned and lacking in nuance, but his larger point must be acknowledged: that Argentina declined, relative to Canada, as a wheat-exporting nation is worthy of careful investigation.
The argument presented by Solberg is suggestive but not conclusive. He should have examined, first, what happened in other areas of Argentine farm production (beef, linseed oil, maize, wool) and the national economy in order to determine whether the nation merely transferred resources from wheat to more profitable activities after 1930. Second, the consequences of the immigrants’ cultural expectations are asserted rather than explored. Third, since some Canadian scholars also employ a version of dependency theory (the “staple trap”), Canada’s experience does not necessarily demonstrate the flaws in that approach. Finally, Solberg would not convince Canadian farmers that they were well treated simply because they were better educated, better housed, and more influential in national political debates than their counterparts in Argentina. Rather, like their scholarly champion, V. C. Fowke, Canadian fanners would have appealed to abstract standards of “economic justice” for citizens of both nations.
The great virtue of this book is its comparative framework. Solberg may not have added new material to the history of Argentine or Canadian wheat production, but, by juxtaposing their national histories, he established a realistic gauge by which to measure the experience of each. Clobal markets and international competition are interesting and timely subjects. According to Solberg, Argentina’s relative failure or Canada’s relative success in the wheat trade should be attributed to government interventions in the economy. Free trade advocates in North America must consider this provocative dissent when they turn to the proposed Canada-U. S. trade arrangement.
