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The War and Canadian Wheat

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

G. E. Britnell
G. E. Britnell*
Affiliation:
The University of Saskatchewan
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Extract

A Canadian wheat problem had existed, in one form or another, for ten years prior to the outbreak of war in September, 1939. Economic nationalism and world depression had brought shrinking export markets and ruinously low prices to the wheat economy of the Prairie Provinces; drought and soil drifting had brought complete destitution over wide areas; and crop failures in Western Canada had placed a heavy relief burden on the federal Treasury and redacted sharply on the economic life of every province in the Dominion. Surplus world wheat stocks had accumulated rapidly after 1928 (see Table I) but were reduced between 1934 and 1938 by lower average yields so that by the end of the 1937-8 crop-marketing season both world and Canadian carry-overs were back to normal levels or even lower. As a result, both world and Canadian wheat prices began to rise in 1936 and, although subject to fairly wide swings, were maintained for nearly two years at the highest levels since the fall of 1929. However, in 1938 world wheat production reached an all-time peak with good yields harvested from a record world wheat acreage; the Winnipeg cash price of No. 1 Manitoba Northern wheat, basis in store Fort William-Port Arthur, fell from $1.49 a bushel in January, to an average of 59 cents in November, and governments intervened to support prices paid to growers in each of the four major wheat-exporting countries of Canada, the United States, Argentina, and Australia. A t the end of the 1938-9 crop year, despite a moderate increase in international trade in wheat, the world wheat carry-over was approaching the 1934 peak; world wheat production in 1939 was second only to the large crop of 1938; and world supplies of wheat were the largest on record.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , August 1941 , pp. 397 - 413
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1941

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References

1 See Report of the Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations (Ottawa, 1939)Google Scholar; Britnell, G. E., The Wheat Economy (Toronto, 1939)Google Scholar; Fowke, V. C., “Dominion Aids to Wheat Marketing, 1929-39” (Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, vol. VI, 08, 1940, pp. 390–402).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 This figure represented about 60 cents per bushel to the farmer as the average country-elevator or “farm” price of wheat excludes certain fixed charges of about 20 cents per bushel for freight, elevator handling charges, inspection and grading fees, commissions, etc.

3 See Statutes of Canada, 3 Geo. VI, c. 39; see also 25-26 Geo. V, c. 53 (The Canadian Wheat Board Act, 1935), and Reports of the Canadian Wheat Board for the crop years 1935-6 to 1939-40 inclusive.

4 See Statutes of Canada, 3 Geo. VI, c. 34; see also Britnell, G. E., “Dominion Legislation Affecting Western Agriculture, 1939” (Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, vol. VI, 05, 1940, pp. 275–82).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 See Statutes of Canada, 4 Geo. VI, c. 25; see also statements by the Minister of Trade and Commerce ( Canada, House of Commons Debates, vol. LXXVIII, 07 24, 1940, pp. 2039–41Google Scholar, and vol. LXXIX, Nov. 22, 1940, pp. 370-8).

6 See statement by the Minister of Trade and Commerce (ibid., July 24, 1940, p. 2040).

7 See James Richardson & Sons; Weekly Grain Letter (Winnipeg), 05 14, 1941.Google Scholar

8 See Monthly Review of the Wheat Situation, 08, 1940, p. 11 Google Scholar and June, 1941, p. 11 (Ottawa, Dominion Bureau of Statistics). United States' exports of wheat and flour in the crop year 1940-1 have been far below the levels of the previous two years.

9 See Sharp, M. W., “Allied Wheat Buying in Relationship to Canadian Marketing Policy, 1914-18” (Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, vol. VI, 08, 1940, pp. 372–89).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 See statements by the Minister of Trade and Commerce ( Canada, House of Commons Debates, 08. 2, 1940, p. 2518 Google Scholar and May 13, 1941, p. 2979).

11 Ibid., June 4, 1940, p. 530. (In June, 1940, the Cereals Import Committee became the Cereal Imports Branch of the Ministry of Food.)

12 Ibid., Aug. 2, 1940, pp. 2518-19.

13 Ibid., p. 2519.

14 Ibid., May 13, 1941, p, 2979.

15 On the evolution of British buying policy and for a review of Canadian wheat marketing since the outbreak of war, see James Richardson & Sons; Weekly Grain Letter, May 14, 1941.

16 Canada, House of Commons Debates, 03 12, 1941, pp. 1595–1600.Google Scholar

17 Ibid., pp. 1600-1.

18 For full text of the revised regulations, see ibid., May 2, 1941, pp. 2717-19. “‘Summerfallow’ means the cultivation of fallow land prior to and including July 31, 1941, in such a way as to conserve soil moisture or to prevent soil drifting, or both; ‘Coarse grains’ means barley, oats, rye, corn, peas, flax and millet; ‘Grass’ means all grasses, clovers and alfalfa” (p. 2717).

19 See Statutes of Canada, 3 Geo. VI, c. 36, and Britnell, G. E., “Dominion Legislation Affecting Western Agriculture, 1939,” pp. 279–82.Google Scholar

20 See Canada, House of Commons Debates, 05 2, 1941, p. 2722 Google Scholar; “Department of Agriculture, Item 422, Special … $35,000,000.” For the lengthy debate on this appropriation and on all phases of the government's wheat policy for 1941, see ibid., March 26–May 2, 1941.

21 A Plan to Reduce Wheat Acreage and Make More Money Available for Necessary War Supplies (printed under Authority Hon. J. G. Gardiner, Minister of Agriculture, Ottawa, 1941), p. 2.Google Scholar See also Less Wheat in 1941 Will Help Win the War (Ottawa, King's Printer, 1941).Google Scholar

22 Canada, House of Commons Debates, March 26, p. 2067.

23 Ibid., March 27, p. 2090.

24 See Canada's Wheat Problem, published by Authority of the Hon. James A. MacKinnon, M.P., Minister of Trade and Commerce, April, 1941: “Victory for the Democracies means the re-establishment of international trade, and the opportunity for free peoples to carry on the occupations which they prefer and at which they are most proficient” (p. 15); see also A Plan to Reduce Wheat Acreage and a speech by the Hon. J. G. Gardiner, Minister of Agriculture ( Canada, House of Commons Debates, vol. LXXIX, 11. 14, 1940, pp. 107–20Google Scholar).

25 Intentions to Plant, 1941, issued by the Agricultural Branch, Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Ottawa, May 9, 1941. [Early in July, the Hon. J. G. Gardiner, Minister of Agriculture, on the basis of farmers' preliminary (unsworn) applications for payments under the government's plan, released figures indicating a reduction of 10.8 million acres, or 37 per cent in the area sown to wheat in 1941. However, on July 25, the second official estimate of the Dominion Bureau of Statistics placed the western reduction at 6.2 million acres or 22.3 per cent (as compared with the first estimate, for the Prairie Provinces of 6.9 million acres or 25 per cent). In reading the proofs of this paper, the original D.B.S. estimates have, therefore, been allowed to stand unchanged.]

26 Canada, House of Commons Debates, 03 27, 1941, p. 2086.Google Scholar

27 See particularly Bennett, M. K., “Wheat and War, 1914-18 and Now” (Wheat Studies of the Food Research Institute, vol. XVI, 11, 1939)Google Scholar, and Helen C. Farnsworth, “Wheat in the Post-Surplus Period 1900-09 with Recent Analogies and Contrasts” (ibid., vol. XVII, April, 1941).

28 Compare the experience of Australia described in Wadham, S. M. and Wood, G. L., Land Utilization in Australia (Melbourne, 1939).Google Scholar