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The Changing Structure of Canadian Agriculture, 1867–1897

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Marvin McInnis
Marvin McInnis
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Economics, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada, K7L 3N6.
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Abstract

This paper re-examines the changing structure of Canadian agriculture over the period between Confederation and the beginning of the “wheat boom.” A pattern of changes is found that differs in some respects from the long-received accounts. The shift from wheat to mixed farming was accomplished by an earlier date than is usually supposed, and domestic demand is due more emphasis, relative to export demand, than it is usually given.

Type
Papers Presented at the Forty-First Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , March 1982 , pp. 191 - 198
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1982

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References

1 Fowke, V. C., Canadian Agricultural Policy (Toronto, 1946), esp. chaps. 4 and 8;Google ScholarJones, R. L., History of Agriculture in Ontario, 1613–1880 (Toronto, 1946), esp. chaps. 14–16;Google ScholarLawr, D. A., “The Development of Ontario Farming, 1870–1919: Patterns of Growth and Change”, Ontario History, 44 (1972), 239–51;Google ScholarMarr, William L. and Paterson, Donald G., Canada: An Economic History (Toronto, 1980), chap. 4.Google Scholar

2 Marr, William L., “The Wheat Economy in Reverse: Ontario's Wheat Production, 1887–1917”, Canadian Journal of Economics, 14 (02 1981), 136–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 The paper is actually a preliminary offshoot of a study by the author and M. C. Urquhart that has involved the estimation of net agricultural output for Canada on an annual basis for the years from 1870 until 1926, when the official national income series published by Statistics Canada begins. That study in turn is a part of a larger project, organized by M. C. Urquhart, to produce a new historical national income series for Canada.Google Scholar

4 In fact it was not until 1891/92 that wheat shipments from the Canadian west had a perceptible impact on the eastern market. One of the main reasons that the period after 1882 gets so much emphasis is that good, annual agricultural statistics for the province of Ontario begin in that year.Google Scholar

5 The Canadian wheat trade over the years 1866/67 through 1870/71 can be summarized as follows:

6 One might worry about the extent to which this change was an artifact arising out of the act of Confederation itself. What were previously exports from Canada to the Maritime colonies of British North America would, after Confederation in 1867, be internal rather than external trade. This redefinitional effect, however, turns out to be only a small part of the overall change. Canada continued to export premium grade spring wheat and wheat flour to Britain but provided for an increasing fraction of its own consumption through imports of lower grade fall wheat from the United States.Google Scholar

7 Net imports were at an all-time high in 1876/77. Two years later more than 10 percent of production was being exported as wheat or wheat flour. In 1879/80 exports accounted for almost one quarter of the crop. That development came about in face of a falling, not a rising, world price of wheat.Google Scholar

8 The 1870 crop reported in the census of 1871 was a notoriously bad one. Wheat yields in Ontario averaged only 10.4 bushels per acre.Google Scholar

9 In all fairness, however, most writers in the “staples” vein look upon the decades of the late- nineteenth century as a period when Canada really lacked an effective staple. Neither cheese nor cattle is grouped among the venerable list of real “staples” of the Canadian economy. At its peak cheese production never contributed as much as 10 percent of total agricultural production.Google Scholar

10 Canadians were never cheese eaters of any consequence. At this time per capita cheese consumption in Canada was well below that of almost any European country.Google Scholar

11 This has recently been re-examined by Evans, Simon, “Canadian Beef for Victorian Britain”, Agricultural History, 53 (10 1979), 748–62. Evans makes a close link between Canadian exports and cattle production on the open ranges of Alberta but his procedures and evidence are not beyond question.Google Scholar

12 By 1889–92 net imports of pork amounted to almost 10 percent of domestic production. Again, that was a situation that was to shift rapidly.Google Scholar