THE WORLD’S LARGEST WHEATFIELD
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.
[Illustration: Wheat is to Saskatchewan what coals are to Newcastle.
With only one fifth of its arable land being farmed, the province
raises more than half the total crop of the Dominion.]
[Illustration]
[Illustration: Farming is done on a largo scale on the great wheat
farms. Ploughs turning over twelve furrows at a time are pulled by
traction engines, and when the wheat is ripe a dozen binders are
started in one field.]
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.