1912] The Work of the Dominion Experimental Farms. 17 



THE WORK OF THE DOMINION EXPERIMENTAL FARMS 

 By Frank T. Shutt, M.A., F.I.C. 



Assistant Director and Dominion Chemist. 



{Read 14th December, igi2.) 



Agriculture is the basic industry of Canada: it is the foundation 

 upon which the Canada of to-day has been built and upon which she 

 to-day rests. As it has been the pioneer occupation in this Dominion, so 

 must it always remain the staple business of our people, influencing and 

 determining by its development and progress the welfare and prosperity 

 of our national life. To-day it employs directly more than half of our 

 population. 



Our commerce and our manufactures are directly or indirectly 

 dependent for their expansion upon the country's harvests: as the 

 latter increase in volume and value so will all other industries assume 

 greater importance. In a word, Canada is essentially an agricultural, 

 a food -producing country ; as we are able to place more and more acres 

 of our unoccupied lands under successful tillage, as we are able to profit- 

 ably and without impairment of the fertility of our land increase crop 

 yields, so shall we, in a very permanent and eminently satisfactory way, 

 add to the nation's wealth, not only as regards agricultural products, 

 but in the support and encouragement of every calling and occupation 

 that makes for the country's good. 



Another statement : Canada's cultivable land is her greatest and 

 most valuable asset. And in saying this I am not unmindful of her 

 many natural resources other than productive land, her mineral wealth, 

 her immense forests, her large and valuable fisheries, her unsurpassed 

 water-powers. All these as developed and properly conserved will indeed 

 be ever-increasing sources of wealth, but nevertheless it will be the 

 wealth and life as coming from our farms which will play the most 

 important and vital part, which will contribute most towards the build- 

 ing up and prosperity of this country in its national life. 



To support these contentions I may bring forward a few statistics 

 regarding our tillable areas. In the nine provinces of Canada we have 

 a land area of approximately 986,533,000 acres, of which at a very con- 

 servative estimate 36 per cent, (or 358,835,000 acres) is capable of occu- 

 pation as farm lands. At the present time there is probably not more 



