EFFORTS TO INCREASE FOOD RESOURCES 



with its golden stalks standing proudly erect. It took 

 that terrible year of 1907, when even the earliest varieties 

 failed to ripen, to prove its real worth to the spring wheat 

 section of North America. It is largely owing to Angus 

 Mackay that this wheat is known at all. 



Mackay was a hard-headed settler at Indian Head in 

 Saskatchewan who, largely by accident, had learned the 

 value of summer fallow. It came about in this way. Back 

 in 1885 he had finished plowing his land for wheat, but 

 had it only half sown when a threatened Indian uprising 

 brought the soldiers past his farm. They commandeered his 

 horses and left him nothing to do but to watch the wheat 

 sprout and the fields turn green on half of his farm. The 

 other half remained black and barren save for the weeds 

 starting here and there. Hating the sight of weeds, Mackay 

 finally obtained one horse, too feeble perhaps for the 

 soldiers; it was then too late to sow wheat, but he could 

 at least keep those weeds from growing to seed. 



Next year, with his horses back, all his fields were 

 planted — the stubble land where a good harvest had been 

 reaped the year before, as well as the land that had stood 

 bare from planting time to planting time. This year, 1886, 

 was to be put down as the worst the Canadian plains had 

 yet experienced. There had been many dry years in Canada 

 but none that blasted the stalks and shrivelled the grain 

 as this one did. The wheat that the farmers had counted 

 on to send back to the Old Country to compete with the 

 best from Australia and Argentina was fit only for chicken 

 feed — where there was any grain worth harvesting at all. 



On Mackay's farm the stage was set for an outstanding 

 demonstration, with results so clear cut and decisive that 

 even the dullest could understand. All the wheat planted 

 on the stubble ground was as poor as that on all the other 

 fields stretching away on every side in one grim desolation, 

 but the wheat on the fallowed field was green and thrifty. 



[357] 



