EFFORTS TO INCREASE FOOD RESOURCES 



the plants should have been growing the fastest, the days 

 were cool and cloudy and the nights cold with threat of 

 frost. On August first the thermometer went to 35°. 

 On the night of September twelfth there was a hard freeze. 

 All over Saskatchewan and the neighboring provinces, 

 Red Fife, the farmer's principal crop, had just begun to 

 turn from green to yellow. In the kernels there was too 

 much moisture to escape the ruin wrought by icy crystals. 



In the trial plots there was equal desolation — in all 

 except one plot labelled Marquis. Looking at those golden 

 yellow stalks standing erect, the kernels hard and plump, 

 Mackay saw the wheat he had long been looking for. 



Equally good reports from the other stations were sent 

 back to Ottawa. "Marquis ripens from four to six days 

 earlier than Fife and is less subject to stem rust." Ten 

 years later 80 per cent of the wheat grown in the prairie 

 provinces of Canada was Marquis. This was just in time, 

 too, because in 1917 the mother country needed food 

 as she never had before. After the war, a varietal census 

 in the United States showed Marquis to be the leading 

 spring wheat. It now makes up two-thirds of all the grain 

 of this type harvested. 



Such is the way new wheats are made from old. 



Although wheat is of more immediate concern to the 

 people of the United States, corn is indirectly of greater 

 importance. Cattle, sheep, and swine are fattened on corn. 

 In the form of meal and silage it makes up the bulk of the 

 dairy ration. Without this cereal, eggs would cost more 

 than they do. Cornstarch, corn oil, and corn syrup are 

 used by cooks in daily recipes. Corn is the most valuable 

 of our food resources. 



A few years ago the editor of Wallace s Farmer reproduced 

 on the cover of his magazine a photograph of the prize- 

 winning ears of dent corn exhibited at the International 

 Grain Show at Chicago. These splendid specimens — long, 



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