For the past two weeks I have been travelling through lands that produce ninety per cent. of Canada’s most valuable asset—wheat. The Dominion is the second greatest wheat country in the world, ranking next to the United States. It is the granary of the British Empire, raising annually twice as much wheat as Australia and fifty million bushels more than India. The wheat crop is increasing and Canada may some day lead the world in its production. These prairies contain what is probably the most extensive unbroken area of grain land on earth. In fact, so much wheat is planted in some regions that it forms an almost continuous field reaching for hundreds of miles. The soil is a rich black loam that produces easily twenty bushels to an acre, and often forty and fifty.
The Canadian wheat belt extends from the Red River valley of Manitoba to the foothills of the Rockies, and from Minnesota and North Dakota northward for a distance greater than from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. New wheat lands are constantly being opened, and large crops are now grown in the Peace River country, three hundred miles north of Edmonton.
A man who is an authority on wheat raising tells me that the possible acreage in the Canadian West is enormous. Says he:
“We have something like three hundred and twenty thousand square miles of wheat lands. Divide this in two, setting half aside for poor soil and mixed farming, and there is left more than one hundred-thousand square miles. In round numbers, it is one hundred million acres, and the probability is that it can raise an average of twenty-five bushels to the acre. This gives us a possible crop of twenty-five hundred million bushels, which is more than three times as much as the United States produces in a year. I do not say that Canada will soon reach that figure, but her wheat yield will steadily increase, and it will not be long before it will equal yours.
“We were producing grain near Winnipeg long before your Western states existed. Wheat was raised in Manitoba by Lord Selkirk’s colony as far back as 1812. The settlers came in through Hudson Bay and worked their way down to the prairie. They were so far from the markets that there was no demand outside their own wants, and it was only when the United States had developed its West that we began to farm in earnest. Even then we had to wait for the railroads, which were first built through early in the 80’s.”
More than half the total wheat crop of the Dominion is raised in Saskatchewan, and still only one fifth of the fifty-eight million acres of arable land in that province is under cultivation. Indeed, wheat here is what coals are to Newcastle or diamonds to Kimberley. This applies to quality as well as quantity, for at a recent International Grain and Hay Show held at Chicago a farmer from Saskatchewan carried off the first prize for the best wheat grown on the North American continent.
The principal wheat area extends from the southeast corner of the province northwesterly along the valley of the Saskatchewan River to the Alberta boundary. This belt is five hundred miles long and in some places two hundred miles wide. Many of its farms contain thousands of acres, and the average holding is three hundred and twenty acres, with one hundred and fifty acres in wheat. When the land was first settled, wheat was the only crop raised, but mixed farming is becoming more important each year and there are now large crops of oats, hay, and alfalfa.
The dry climate and hot summer days of the prairies are just right for producing a hard grain, with the high gluten content that makes a big loaf of bread. In that quality Canadian wheat ranks highest in the world. It is mixed with even the finest of the United States product to produce the best flour.
The chief varieties grown are red fife and marquis. Red fife was discovered by a Canadian farmer and is the older. Marquis was originated by a scientist of the Dominion Agricultural Department by crossing red fife with an early ripening Indian wheat known as hard red Calcutta. It was distributed among the farmers for general use in 1909, and quickly became the most valuable wheat produced in America.
During various trips to Canada I have seen the wheat belt in all its aspects. As soon as the snow has melted and the frost is out of the ground the ploughs are started. The ploughing may be done by the farmers, each on his own land, or by contractors who make a business of preparing fields for planting, and who, later on, do much of the threshing. The ordinary farmer uses a gang plough and from four to a half dozen horses. With four horses he is able to plough more than two acres a day. Much of the work is done by tractors, which pull gang ploughs that turn over a strip of sod as wide as the average city sidewalk.
The next process is back-setting. This means going over the field again and throwing the furrows in the opposite direction. Where the land is new, some of the farmers plough it in the spring and back-set it in the summer, seeding it during the following spring. Others, who are anxious to get quick returns, sow wheat the same year that they break up the soil. Sometimes flax is planted as the first crop and wheat the next year.
The old picture of the farmer going over the ploughed ground sowing the grain broadcast is something one never sees in Canada. The wheat here is planted with drills, usually pulled by four horses, although on the larger farms several drills, drawn by tractors, sometimes follow one another over the fields.
The busiest time of the year comes with the harvest, which usually begins about the middle of August. The farmers now go to work with a vim. In many instances the women and the girls join the men and the boys in the fields. Nearly every man has his own harvesting machinery and the girls sometimes drive the binders that cut the grain. At the same time thousands of labourers are brought in from the United States, eastern Canada, and even from England. They are transported at reduced rates by the railroads and are sure of work at good wages until the grain has been loaded upon the cars that take it to the head of the Great Lakes.
Harvesting on the larger farms goes on from daybreak to dark, and sometimes even by twilight and moonlight. After the wheat reaches a certain point in ripening, it must be cut without delay. If it becomes wet it will deteriorate, and if left too long it will hull during the harvesting, or an untimely frost may ruin it. I have visited one farm near Dundurn where sixteen hundred acres of grain all became ripe overnight. The next morning the owner started a dozen harvesters at work, keeping the machines going until every stalk was cut. Horses were put on in relays every four hours and there was no stopping to rest at the end of the field. In Alberta there is a farm five times as large, where sixty binders, each pulled by a four-horse team, are used to cut the crop.
Riding through the country in the fall, one is seldom away from the sound of the threshing machine. Only a few farmers own these machines, most of the threshing being done by contractors and their crews who go from farm to farm.
Imagine yourself with me at threshing time, and let us see how the work is done. The wheatfield we choose contains one thousand acres and it is spotted with shocks, or stooks, as they are called here. Each stook consists of a number of sheaves stood upon end on the ground with others so arranged on top that it will shed rain. A half dozen teams are moving over the field gathering up the stooks. As soon as a wagon is loaded it is driven to the thresher, into whose greedy mouth the sheaves are poured continuously from sunrise to sunset. At the same time grain is flowing out of the thresher into the wagons or motor trucks that carry it away.
In the United States wheat is often held by the farmers for a favourable price. In Canada very few farms have their own granaries. The wheat goes from the threshing machine to the local elevator, or, if none is accessible, it is sent directly to the railroad and shipped to Fort William and Port Arthur. There are now elevators at fifteen hundred different places throughout the wheat region. Each of these stations has from one to nine elevators standing out on the landscape, indicating the productiveness of the surrounding country. The elevators of Canada have a total capacity of two hundred and thirty-eight million bushels. There are companies that have chains of such granaries. They will either store the wheat for the farmer, handle it on commission, or buy it from him directly at a price based on the current market value of that in storage at Fort William.
The wheat begins to come to the elevators about the first of September, and by the middle or latter part of October they are well filled. Each has a license, and is inspected regularly by the government. In order to maintain the high standard of western Canadian wheat, every shipment must be weighed and tested by a Dominion weigh-master.
Many of the country elevators are owned by milling companies. The flour industry is centred in Ontario, the largest mill in the Dominion being at Port Colborne at the western end of the Welland Canal. Flour is manufactured in large quantities also at Fort William, Toronto, Montreal, and Winnipeg. Smaller mills exist throughout Canada, and for many years the Hudson’s Bay Company operated one at Fort Vermilion, six hundred miles northwest of Winnipeg. Ten million barrels of flour are annually exported, almost half of which is taken by England.
What Canada gets for her wheat depends not only on her own crop and that of the United States, but on conditions all over the world. Wheat is raised in every part of the globe, and is harvested in one place or another each month of the year. Therefore, a drought in Australia, a frost in Argentina, monsoons in India, new tariff laws in a given country, or a host of other reasons, may cause a drop or a rise in the prices here. In any event, though the price in Canada may be no higher than that paid in the United States, it represents a larger return on the original investment. The Canadian farmer has the advantage of raising his wheat on land that has cost him perhaps only a third of what has been paid by his neighbour across the border.