ON AGRICULTURE TO CANADA 129 



While wheat is the principal crop grown on the prairie, there is 

 a sort of mixed farming in the older and more settled districts, 

 where wheat is succeeded by oats or barley seeded down with grass. 

 In the newer lands of the far west, however, the most common 

 system is two or three years in wheat, then a year in fallow, and back 

 to wheat again. Either system is exhaustive enough to the soil. 

 Nobody, however, knows this better than some of the intelligent 

 wheat farmers of Canada. We interviewed one of them, who six 

 or seven years ago had come from the States, though he was German 

 born, and settled on the prairie, south-west of Saskatoon. Discuss- 

 ing with him the scientific cultivation of the soil and the exhaustion 

 that must necessarily follow present methods in Canada, he said : 

 " You do not need to tell me about these things. I know perfectly 

 well that continuous wheat-farming exhausts the soil, but I know 

 too that stock-raising, or at any rate dairy-farming, means con- 

 tinuous and hard work, and I know too that wheat-growing requires 

 less capital and less labour and gives bigger returns ; and though 

 there is a disadvantage in having all one's eggs in one basket, I am 

 to take the risk and go on growing wheat until the soil will grow 

 it no longer, and then I shall sell out to the tenderfoot and move 

 west." This may not be a far-sighted policy from the point of view 

 of Canada's ultimate prosperity, though it is a policy deliberately 

 followed by intelligent Canadian farmers. If little can be said for 

 the policy something at least can be said for the men. They are 

 doing precisely what most men in similar circumstances are doing — 

 they are making hay while the sun shines. They are looking after 

 themselves and their own generation, resting assured that the 

 fertility of Canadian soil will last all their time, and will in due 

 course be restored by some other body when the needs of the millions 

 who must before long inhabit Canada will demand a system of 

 mixed farming. 



Fall Wheat 



Both fall and spring wheat are grown on the prairie. Fall 

 wheat is for the most part confined to the semi-arid region in southern 

 Alberta, which was once, and that not long ago, given up to the 

 rancher, because it was considered too dry for wheat-raising. It 

 was found, however, that the moisture, if not abundant, was, when 

 properly conserved, sufficient, and that the comparative mildness 

 of the winter made it possible to grow fall wheat. Little progress, 

 however, was made, till the introduction a few years ago of " Alberta 

 Red." In 1902, 3444 acres were sown. In 1908, the area under fall 

 wheat in Alberta alone was 101,000 acres. Sowing begins in July 

 or August. The wheat grows to a height of 6 or 8 inches in the 

 autumn. It remains in the ground for a whole year. Its longer 

 life enables the roots to penetrate farther into the soil both in search 

 of food and water, and it produces a heavier and an earlier crop than 

 spring wheat. 



