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The Implications of United States Policy for the Canadian Wheat Economy*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 November 2014
Extract
Some confusion regarding the present position ot the Canadian wheat economy is inevitable if one reads the newspapers at all. One press report will suggest a temporary lull in the almost monotonous prosperity in which the prairies are said to have basked for the last ten years or more; another suggests blue ruin and a return to the hungry thirties. The Toronto Globe and Mail, viewing the essentially simple economic and social phenomena of the hinterland as from a metropolitan eminence, attempted a compromise some weeks ago in a cartoon showing a horde of embattled western farmers descending on Ottawa demanding justice and parity in a fleet of Cadillacs. Yet the gibe seems a bit unfair at a time when the wheat farmer does not know where his next Cadillac is coming from. All this may suggest that an effort is necessary to find some middle path between the unfailing optimism of the Minister of Trade and Commerce, whose department and board have in their custody and care the disposition and sale of our wheat, on the one hand, and the almost unrelieved pessimism of certain other V.I.P.'s and the Interprovincial Farm Union Council on the other.
If there are problems facing the prairie economy today they can hardly be charged either to reckless expansion of wheat acreage or to improvident gambling on high prices for wheat in the world market. Perhaps it is prairie experience with the heavy human and capital losses of prolonged depression, through the thirties and early forties, which explains why the wheat grower seems to have put so much emphasis on stability in the post-war period.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , February 1956 , pp. 1 - 16
- Copyright
- Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1956
Footnotes
*
This paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Royal Society of Canada, Section II, at Toronto, June 6, 1955, at which time the writer was Harold A. Innis Visiting Professor in Political Economy at the University of Toronto.
References
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19 Public Law 118, chap. 195, 83rd Congress, 1st Session.
20 Public Law 665, chap. 937, 83rd Congress, 2nd Session; see also Mutual Security Appropriation Act, 1955, Public Law 778, chap. 1262, 83rd Congress, 2nd Session.
21 Public Law 480, chap. 469, 83rd Congress, 2nd Session.
22 Public Law 118, sec. 550 (b) (1).
23 Public Law 480, sec. 101(a).
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34 Information by correspondence from the President, Winnipeg Grain Exchange.
35 Since the above was written the restrictions on rye have been extended for a further period of two years without change in the annual quota (see Canada, H. of C. Debates, 07 4, 1955, pp. 5620–1Google Scholar). On September 9, 1955, President Eisenhower announced that restrictions on die imports of oats and barley would be discontinued effective October 1, 1955. It was officially stated that although “it appears unlikely that oats and barley would be imported in such quantities as to interfere materially with domestic price support programs for these grains … the Department of Agriculture will continue to maintain a close review of the situation and if conditions change … will recommend new investigations under Section 22” ( U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Grain Market News, III, no. 37. 09 16, 1955, 1–2.Google Scholar
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49 For example, after an initial payment of $1.40, a gross surplus of $130 million was eventually realized on the wheat operations of the Board covering the crop year 1953–4. All carrying charges and operating costs (that is, country elevator and terminal storage charges, interest and bank charges, administrative and general expenses, etc.) of the Board, amounting to $65.3 million, equivalent to 16.4 cents a bushel, were deducted, leaving a balance of $64.7 million for distribution to growers. See Supplementary Report of the Canadian Wheat Board on the 1953–54 Pool Account—Wheat, 2–5.
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