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The productive exploitation of the "territorial near west" since the end of the nineteenth century was based on the natural supply according to the priority bestowed by the prevailing development model, within the framework of the insertion of the Argentine Republic in the international division of labour. This paper determines the production cycles defined from the use and transformation of the ecosystems (pasture, forest extraction) or their substitution by farming, and holds the hypothesis that the former was limited with regard to the process of exploitation and plundering to which it was subjected. Overloading the fields with livestock, as if they were the rich grasslands of the province of Buenos Aires, agricultural practices and deforestation caused, within a few years, soil exhaustion and erosion resulting from trampling and dryness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]