Ontario has a great outlet for its apples and 

 pears in the markets of the British Isles, with 

 whom a thriving and prosperous trade has been 

 built up. Hundreds of cars of the tenderer 

 fruits also go each year to the Prairie Provinces, 

 in the greater part of which they cannot be 

 raised, and the province is largely their source of 

 supply of peaches, grapes and cherries. A profit- 

 able market has been developed in the United 

 States, where large consignments of fruits find 

 their way. In the past season, though subject 

 to a duty of thirty cents per bushel, shipments 

 of fruit across the border were heavy. 



A further profitable market is the canning 

 factory, and it is no unusual thing, for the fruit 

 grower to sell his entire crop in this direction 

 before it is ready to handle. There are more than 

 seventy canning factories located at suitable 

 transportation centres engaged in putting up 

 fruit and vegetables in tin and glass for sale 

 throughout the Dominion and for export to the 

 British Isles and other parts of the world. 



Co-operation Through Many Organizations 



The spirit of co-operation has long been work- 

 ing in the orchard sections of the province and 

 societies have been formed with the object of the 

 education of the fruit-grower and the handling 

 and sale of his crop. There are more than fifty 

 such societies carrying out their beneficial work. 

 'Recently one large co-operative selling organi- 

 zation was formed of several societies in the 

 Niagara Peninsula to handle and market the 

 entire production of fruit in that area with the 

 exception of the grape crop which has its own 

 organization. 



There are wide and varied opportunities for 

 fruit raising in Ontario, and the best apple lands, 

 ready for planting, can be purchased for from 

 $40 to $100 per acre. Excellent peach and cherry 

 lands in the Niagara district range from $150 to 

 $300 per acre. Grape lands in the same district 

 run from $50 to $200 per acre. In newer fruit 

 districts prices are lower. The capital already 

 invested in the field of fruit is $75,000,000 and 

 the opportunity for further investment enticing. 

 Though three-quarters of the fruit in Canada is 

 produced in Ontario, the industry is still con- 

 sidered in its infancy. 



Farm Land Values 



The fall in the prices received for agricultural products 

 in 1920 was reflected in a decline in the average values of 

 farm lands over the Dominion, thus recording for the first 

 time in Canadian agricultural history a period in which no 

 elevation in the prices of farm lands over the preceding 

 year was registered. Up to the year in question, the 

 only governing factor in setting the value of Canadian farm 

 lands was that of increasing settlement and the consequent 

 decreasing availability of land remaining open for settlement. 

 The extraordinary prices which prevailed for farm produce 

 in 1920 introduced another factor. Farms became more 

 valuable assets and farmers consequently held their proper- 

 ties at higher prices. The same exaggerated values in that 

 period are seen in that year in the amounts paid farm help 



which were $86 for men and $47 for v?r.men per month in 

 comparison with $67 for men and $42 for women in 1921; 

 and in the prices obtained for cattle, horses bringing $106 

 in 1920 as compared with $83 in 1921, milk cows $80 as 

 compared to $5 1 and other cattle in like proportion. Thus 

 the decline in farm values in 1921 was a natural step in the 

 adjustment of abnormal after-war conditions, and was 

 merely a getting back to the road of gradual elevation 

 regulated by the dwindling availability of land. 



The average value of the occupied farm lands of Canada, 

 which includes both improved and unimproved lands, 

 together with dwelling houses, barns, stables and other 

 farm buildings, is returned for 1921 as $40 as compared 

 with $48 for 1920, $46 in 1919, $41 in 1918, $38 in 1917, 

 $36 in 1916, and $35 in 1915. Thus it is seen that present 

 day land 'values have largely assumed the place they 

 would reasonably have filled had not the interruption of 

 inflated prices occurred causing farmers, in the possible 

 contemplation of relinquishing their holdings, to place a 

 proportionally higher figure upon them. 



Values Highest in B.C. 



So many branches of farming are followed in Canada, 

 the practice being so intensive in some areas and so exten- 

 sive in others where land is more plentiful, that a great 

 variation exists in the prices at which farm lands are held in 

 the various provinces. Thus in British Columbia, where the 

 intensive fruit farm of small acreage is the rule, prices are 

 found to be the highest, and the Pacific Coast province leads 

 the Dominion with an average price of $122 per acre for its 

 farm lands. Alberta, which province has probably more 

 vacant land awaiting settlement than any other region, 

 records the lowest average price with $28 per acre. The 

 varied farm lands of Ontario return an average price of 

 $63; those of Quebec $59; Prince Edward Island $46; 

 Nova Scotia and Manitoba $35; Saskatchewan $29 and 

 New Brunswick $28. 



The remarkable feature in connection with the annual 

 publication of land values in Canada is the discovery that 

 farm land of such high fertility and proven productive 

 qualities can be obtained at such low rates, for it must be 

 borne in mind that the prices quoted above have reference 

 only to occupied farm lands at least a part of whose areas 

 is under cultivation and is supplied with a house and other 

 buildings. Take the Province of Alberta, for instance, 

 where the average price of occupied farm land last year was 

 $28 per acre. The average yield of all wheat in Alberta 

 over the !ast five years has been 14.75 bushels to the acre 

 and that of oats 32.50 bushels. In the same period the 

 average price received for the former has been $1.66 per 

 bushel and for the latter .53 per bushel. Thus in one year 

 an acre of Alberta land seeded to wheat returned an average 

 of $24.50 or to oats $17. 



Unceasing Progress of Settlement 



It has been proven over long years of experience, 

 that Canadian farm land outyields in most cereal crops 

 other farming countries, for instance the United States, 

 and the prices of Canadian farm lands bear no relation to 

 their productive powers. Their low figures have been set 

 entirely by the amount of vacant land which remains 

 available for settlement, and their annual values are in a 

 gradual ascendant as this supply dwindles. Probably no 

 country in its colonization history has recorded such a 

 rapid, steady, and consistent rise in farm land values which 

 is merely the mirroring of the unceasing progress of land 

 settlement, Between 1915 and 1921, for instance, there 

 is a rise of from $35 to $40 per acre, or practically a dollar 

 per acre per year. For the acre of Alberta land which the 

 settler might have secured for $18 in 1908 or for $21 in 1914, 

 he must pay $28 for to-day. 



One may, perhaps, safely assume that the future will be 

 free from world-stirring events such as the Great War and 

 from the effects of their devastating aftermaths, and the 

 prices of Canadian lands be governed entirely by the 

 diminution in the supply of available farming tract*. 

 Granted only the working of this factor, the same steady 



63 



