Harald S. Patton

Observations on Canadian Wheat Policy Since the World War

The past two decades embrace a period in which Canada has become established (since 1922) as the premier wheat exporting nation of the world; in which wheat prices touched the highest point (September, 1920) and the lowest depth (December, 1932) in Canadian grain trade history; in which centralized co-operative pool marketing of wheat was conducted for several years on a larger scale than that of any farm product in any country; and in which the federal government has experimented with policies in relation to the marketing and price movements of wheat ranging from established regulatory functions to monopoly handling through a government board and minimum price guarantees. These two decades include three periods of favourable prices and active export demand (1917-20, 1924-9, and 1936-7), with the intervening years characterized by distress prices and restricted foreign demand. Amid these fluctuating economic conditions of the wheat industry there has occurred significant experimentation with different marketing systems, involving shifting relationships between the organized producers, the organized private trade, and the provincial and federal governments.

The War and North American Agriculture

War-time Agricultural Exports . The first world war and the present world war were preceded by periods marked by fundamentally opposite trends in international agricultural trade. The period extending roughly from about 1840 to the outbreak of war in 1914 was characterized by a continuous expansion in the volume and range of importation of foodstuffs and agricultural raw materials into the British Isles and later into industrialized continental Europe from overseas countries. While the dominant position in this expanding overseas agricultural export trade was held by the United States, a definitely rising participation developed after the turn of the century by the British Dominions, Latin American countries, British and Netherlands India, and the African possessions of European powers. Despite the rise after 1880 of agricultural protectionism in such European countries as France and Germany, growth of population and industrialization in Europe was reflected in a steadily increasing volume of agricultural imports into that continent, and after 1896 by a gradually rising trend in world prices of most agricultural staples. This was the great era of the international gold standard, of the free export of private capital, and of free world markets. Although the first world war disrupted this competitive pattern of world agricultural specialization and trade, it greatly stimulated the agricultural export trade of overseas countries, especially of North America, to the allied countries, and this movement to Europe was substantially maintained during the twenties through the twofold influence of American and British foreign lending and investment and of the virtual disappearance of Russia as a significant and dependable agricultural exporter. Between 1925 and 1930 world agricultural trade rose to record levels, but in the later years mounting world stocks and gradually falling gold prices of most staples gave statistical warning of a developing disequilibrium.