ported to have experimented with Siberian grasses in the hope of finding hardy drought- and cold-resisting varieties in distant parts of the world that will endure the climate of high eleva- tions in the Andes and furnish additional forage. The search should be pursued through government agencies in a much more carnest fashion than has been the case up to this time, for our experience in the search of agricultural plants in the United States raiscs the presumption that a similar explora- tion for grasses would lead to a far better adjustment of forage plants to new situations.
Were such means employed to increase the forage resources of the Puna and its larger basins and valleys it would make possible the better use of certain pastures that are now hardly | used at all. In every period of wet years there is a vast in- crease of forage afield. The more favorable slopes have un- counted acres of forage which is wasted, because it is only the minimum capacity of the land that now forms the standard of size of flocks and herds grazing in the mountains. Before herds can be assembled from a distance to take advantage of short-lived wet-scason pastures the dry years have come again,
The Alpaca Pastures of Northern Bolivia
The value of pasture land in the special economy of the Central Andes is illustrated by the experience of Bolivians in the alpaca pastures at high elevations north of Lake Titicaca in the Nevados de Apolobamba.[1] Alpaca wool, which is very fine and long, is best grown from flocks that graze in short, rather thick pastures where there is fairly abundant water supply but especially where the elevation is sufficiently great
- ↑ The pastures of Apolobamba lie in a region long in dispute between Bolivia and Peru. Though a boundary settlement was made on the basis of an arbitral award in 1908, the country in dispute was the scene of many quarrels between individual alpaca owners and landowners of Peru on the one side, and Bolivia on the other. Asa result of continuing quarrels, thefts, and outrages, the number of alpacas was reduced from 200,000 to 60,000 on the Bolivian side. Wool was smuggled across the frontier from Bolivia to Peru whence it was taken to Arequipa and sold in Europe as Arcquipa alpaca. The boundary difficulty embarrassed Bolivia because its officially recognized exports of alpaca wool fell off and it lost in customs receipts. It also lost in financial prestige. for alpaca wool is one of its distinctive exports upon which it depends to keep up its income as well as to stabilize its international exchanges.
