Agriculture
The Dominion Lands Act was passed in 1872 to encourage an agricultural settlement for a united British North America. The completion of the train link between eastern Canada through the District of Assiniboia in 1885, the development of the high-yielding and early-maturing Marquis strain of wheat and establishment of an import market in the United Kingdom supplied the first impetus for economic development and supported population settlement.
World War I had a positive impact on Saskatchewan agriculture. The enlistment quota from Saskatchewan to the Canadian Expeditionary Force as the pre-requisite was for British subjects, and several ethnic bloc settlements were immigrants from Europe. There was a need for food production to be maintained, and farmers were exempt from conscription as well. The allies need for wheat production increased, and farm wages doubled. Following the war, the Soldier Settlement Act of 1917 established service men with agricultural land.
Saskatchewan's population peeked in 1936 at 931,200 persons. The Great Depression combined the 1929 stock market crash with the drought years of the 1930s causing devastating effects on the economy of Saskatchewan. The per capita income between 1928 and 1933 dropped 72%. The drought years of 1928, 1931 through 1934 and again in 1937 hit hard following the recession and the lowered demand for wheat exports. The Prairie Farm Rehabilitaton Administration PFRA established a work relief program developing community pastures, water and irrigation projects. Approximately 250,000 people left the provinces during the era of the Dirty Thirties when Saskatchewan became a virtual dust bowl. World War II also held Saskatchewan's economy back, as overseas markets for wheat were virtually eliminated.
Saskatchewan agricultural land comprises 44% of the total Canadian farmland. Excluding a semi-arid area of the southwest used for grazing the parkland and mixed prairie areas of the province are used for crop production, mixed farming and dairying. Grain farming dominates the parkland area. Saskatchewan usually produces about 54% of Canada's wheat. The vast extensions of unbroken plain are well-suited to large-scale mechanized farming. Wheat is the most familiar crop but other grains like canola, alfalfa, barley flax, mustard, vegetable farms, forage seed, potatoes rapeseed, rye, oats, peas, lentils, canary seed, and barley are also grown. Specialty crop production sown in 1981 amounted to 136,000 to 2,474,000 hectares (340,000 to 6,110,000 acres) in 2001. The farm and agricultural component is still a significant part of the economy the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool (SWP), has been "the world's largest grain-handling co-operative". The SWP now named Vittera,is no longer the major industrial component provincially ranking eighth largest.
Meat processing is the largest industry here, followed by dairy production, breweries, and the subsidiary industry of agricultural implements. Saskatchewan still has cattle ranching along the southwestern corner of the province. Mixed grain farming, dairy farms, mixed livestock and grazing lands dot the central lowlands region of this prairie province. Beef cattle production in the province is only exceeded by Alberta. Agricultural data for Saskatchewan has been collected since 1906. Saskatchewan has 41% of Canada's agricultural land, with an estimated 44,329 farms in 2006, generating a net farm income $CAN697.3 million in 2007.
Read more about this topic: Economy Of Saskatchewan
Famous quotes containing the word agriculture:
“In past years, the amount of money that has had to be been spent on armaments, great and small, instead of on productive industry and agriculture and the arts, has been a disgrace to all of us in every part of the world.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“But the nomads were the terror of all those whom the soil or the advantages of the market had induced to build towns. Agriculture therefore was a religious injunction, because of the perils of the state from nomadism.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)