7

Modern Business Geography

Fic. 69. A flock of sheep on a mountain slope in eastern Washington. Sheep crop the grass so
close to the ground that the shepherd must keep his flock moving to new pastures where the
prass is long enough to provide pasturace.

Cattle raising outside the United States. Figure 68 shows that
there are far more cattle in densely populated western Europe than
in the whole of the United States. Many European cattle are
raised in barns. They cannot be turned out to pasture, because practically
 all the land is needed for crops.
Argentina and Uruguay are the great cattle countries of the southern
 hemisphere (Fig. 68). From the vast grasslands of these countries
 enormous herds are driven amid clouds of dust to the cities,
where they are slaughtered. The beef is frozen and sent to the seaports
 for shipment in great refrigerator steamships.
On the vast dry plains of southern Russia, the Hungarian
plain, and the plains and plateaus of Australia and South Africa,
cattle can be raised as easily as on our own western plains and plateaus.
 Many cities, like Buenos Aires and Sydney, owe part of their
growth to the fact that they are convenient centers for the business
of slaughtering animals and shipping the meat to western Europe.
The increasing cost of meat. Even before the World War the
price of beef had been rising continually, because the population of
the civilized world was increasing more rapidly than the number of
cattle. This process is still going on, even though farmers use automobiles
 and so raise cattle where formerly they raised horses. The