Innovating under Adverse Circumstances: State Initiatives and Farmers’ Experiences during the Agricultural Crisis on the Pampa Seca (1937-1945)

Abstract

From a perspective based both on agricultural history and environmental history, this article analyzes the efforts made by Jewish farmers in the Narcisse Leven colony and the role of the Guatraché experimental station, to deal with extreme drought on the Pampa Seca region in 1930-31, a critical juncture for agriculture in central Argentina that was contemporaneous to the US Dust Bowl. We explain the conservation alternatives tried out from the late 1930s to the mid-1940s in a region posing, from an agro-economic view, huge challenges for the farmers who expected to get yields from working the land. This critical situation forced the State to set up agencies and carry out studies on the erosion process to advise farmers, who also tried out new tilling methods to conserve the soil. Thus, as severe drought, loss of soil fertility and wind erosion called into question the feasibility of farming, Jewish farmers and state agricultural experts worked together to develop dry farming practices that allowed them to obtain higher yields and to conserve the soil.