Locust Barriers

Argentine wheat farmers, overdue last week on their spring sowing, could not get a plow into the ground that a long drought had baked iron-hard. And due sometime next month was a dread enemy: the scourge of locusts trying to repeat their last year's feat of eating clean two northern provinces. Last week brought the farmers a good turn on both counts. Rain fell and softened the hard ground. And the Ministry of Agriculture got under way early against the locusts by announcing $5,000,000 worth of contracts for 12,000 mi. of sheet-iron locust barriers.

The contracts brought good news to British ironmasters, not so good news to U. S. ironmasters. Favored by the pending British-Argentine trade treaty, British companies will deliver two-thirds of the 12,000 mi. of sheet-iron, U. S. companies the rest. The last such contract, in 1924, went entirely to U. S. companies.

On delivery next month the sheet-iron will be distributed at cost to Argentine wheat farmers to wall in their sprouting fields. The dread locusts in the hungry hopper stage will come hopping into the sheet-iron, hop short, pile up in rustling drifts. Workmen will rake them up, burn them in oil or sack them for sale to the Department of Agriculture Defense. The dried and sacked locusts will be sold abroad as fertilizer.

Argentina's one-man Government, frustrated old Hipolito Irigoyen, died last July, stripped of power and mourned bitterly by 150,000 poor followers, including many who called themselves Personalistas Irigoyenistas ("Personal Friends of Irigoyen"). Last week Irigoyen's ranch was put up for auction. A few "personal friends" showed up to buy his steers for $18 each, his horses for $2.

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