Coming from a tiny cattle-producing country of 3.2 million people, Mr. Batlle's ideas are not likely to carry much weight beyond Uruguay.
Most of the way, we were either in mountains or hills dotted with wildflowers, goats, cattle and tiny villages.
However, its cost has been out of sight because the Government pays part-time farmers to grow rice or fruit or raise a few head of cattle on tiny plots.
The vista spans miles in every direction, surveying tiny mesquite stands, specks of cattle, a few dusty ranch houses in the distance.
In 1977, Peter accepted an invitation from Terry Jones of Monty Python and the Guardian writer Richard Boston, both passionate believers in the concept of small is beautiful, to build a tiny brewery in a former cattle byre at Penrhos Court in Herefordshire.
Farmers like Mr. Kubo raise their highly prized cattle in this tiny town, just inland from one of the more spectacular wrinkles in Japan's glorious Pacific coastline, under conditions that a Park Avenue Pekingese might envy.
The mayor of Tulle, Bernard Combes, is pressing for a high-speed rail line to connect Paris, Orléans, Limoges, Brive (near Tulle) and Toulouse.Mr Chirac's strangest legacy is his own museum, set amid herds of Limousin cattle in the tiny village of Sarran, close to his small country chateau.
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It is striking to note that most of the work in and around the town seems to be done by women - bent double in the fields, tending to cattle, and running the tiny makeshift shops that line the muddy roads.
Cattle grazed lazily next to tiny rusting oil wells that pumped with even less vigor.
In Europe, mandatory testing for steroid use in cattle is performed on a tiny fraction of animals because it is costly and complicated, generally involving mass spectrometry and gas chromatogaphy to detect the steroids and their metabolites.
