G. E. Britnell

The War and Canadian Wheat

A Canadian wheat problem had existed, in one form or another, for ten years prior to the outbreak of war in September, 1939. Economic nationalism and world depression had brought shrinking export markets and ruinously low prices to the wheat economy of the Prairie Provinces; drought and soil drifting had brought complete destitution over wide areas; and crop failures in Western Canada had placed a heavy relief burden on the federal Treasury and redacted sharply on the economic life of every province in the Dominion. Surplus world wheat stocks had accumulated rapidly after 1928 (see Table I) but were reduced between 1934 and 1938 by lower average yields so that by the end of the 1937-8 crop-marketing season both world and Canadian carry-overs were back to normal levels or even lower. As a result, both world and Canadian wheat prices began to rise in 1936 and, although subject to fairly wide swings, were maintained for nearly two years at the highest levels since the fall of 1929. However, in 1938 world wheat production reached an all-time peak with good yields harvested from a record world wheat acreage; the Winnipeg cash price of No. 1 Manitoba Northern wheat, basis in store Fort William-Port Arthur, fell from

Under-Developed Countries in the World Economy

1.49 a bushel in January, to an average of 59 cents in November, and governments intervened to support prices paid to growers in each of the four major wheat-exporting countries of Canada, the United States, Argentina, and Australia. A t the end of the 1938-9 crop year, despite a moderate increase in international trade in wheat, the world wheat carry-over was approaching the 1934 peak; world wheat production in 1939 was second only to the large crop of 1938; and world supplies of wheat were the largest on record.

The wheat economy

IT is with some misgiving that I put forward the suggestion that a Canadian may be in a better position than either an Englishman or an American-despite the experience of the former, the energy of the latter, and the assurance of both-to appreciate the complex problems of under-developed countries. Nevertheless, emboldened by the modest, freely admitted and unhesitating recognition (by Canadians) of Canadas success in the historic role of interpreting the United States to Great Britain and Great Britain to the United States, and undeterred by the somewhat less striking evidence of our capacity to interpret ourselves to one another within the framework of a federal state, I am ambitious to extend the operations of such an honest broker of goodwill to include a more racially variegated, linguistically diversified, and culturally challenging clientele.