Interregnum
After the dissolution of the early board in 1920, farmers turned to the idea of farmer-owned cooperatives. Cooperative grain elevator operators already existed, like United Grain Growers, which had already been started in 1917. In 1923 and 1924 the wheat pools were created to buy Canadian wheat and resell it overseas. The Alberta Wheat Pool, the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, and Manitoba Pool Elevators quickly became giants in the industry and displaced the private traders. However they did not hedge against falling prices (instead relying on provincial government guarantees), and during the price collapse of 1929, they effectively went bankrupt. The majority of farmers did not want the private traders to return, and now it also seemed impossible for them to own their own marketing companies, so the idea of a government marketing board was revived.
Read more about this topic: Canadian Wheat Board
Famous quotes containing the word interregnum:
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)