50 PRODUCTION 



feedstuff s. On the balance exports and imports of these are nearly 

 equal in value, owing to the relatively heavy imports of maize snd 

 maize products for the pig-raising industry of the East, which 

 offset the exports of barley, oats and linseed. Non-agricultural 

 population has not increased as rapidly in Canada as in the United 

 States, and a greater proportion of the cereal crops is therefore 

 available for export. 1 Neither have the fertile prairie lands been 

 taken up and cropped to exhaustion so quickly as they were south 

 of the International frontier. 2 This is owing to several causes, 

 among which the longer winter fallow season, the slower and later 

 development of railway transport and the more conservative 

 traditions of the farming population are perhaps the most important. 



In considering the probable future production of animal food- 

 stuffs, the area of agricultural land still remaining undeveloped in 

 Canada is of the greatest direct and indirect importance. It is 

 quite certain that extensive areas of such land are still awaiting 

 settlement. Concerning the extent of these areas various estimates 

 have been made. 3 



It appears, however, that the periodicity of the rainfall in the 

 semi-arid belt of Alberta and South- Western Saskatchewan is an 

 important factor, which has not as yet been accurately determined. 

 Even when the area suitable for cereals is more or less accurately 

 determined, factors of an uncertain kind may enter so as to modify 

 the proportion of that land devoted to cereal crops. All that can 

 be safely said at present is that the area of improved land will 

 increase considerably in the near future in the Canadian prairie 

 provinces, and that the cultivation of cereals, especially of wheat 

 and oats, will continue for some time to be the leading type of 



1 It should be noted that in recent years the total wheat production of 

 Canada which attracts so much attention on account of the export-surplus 

 has not averaged more than i of that of the United States. Moreover, 

 the production of oats in Canada has considerably exceeded, on an average 

 of recent years, the production of wheat. 



2 The average wheat yield per acre in Canada exceeded that of the United 

 States by about 30% on an average of the years 1905-1914. 



8 Professor Mavor, in the Oxford Survey of the British Empire, 1911; 

 Vol. IV., p. 147, 148, gives an estimate of 22-4 million acres as the maximum 

 area of future wheat-producing land, i.e., about twice the average acreage 

 of the years 1910-12. This, however, seems rather conservative, and there 

 would probably be an additional allowance for other cereal crops than wheat. 



Cf., Unstead, " Climatic Limits of Wheat Cultivation with Special Reference 

 to North America," Geog. Journal, May, 1912, pp. 441, 442 : " The total 

 acreage (of wheat) will be very much greater than it is at present, since it 

 may be extended into the colder regions of Canada and into the drier regions 

 both in Canada and in the United States." 



The Dominions Commission, in their Fifth Interim Report, state that the 

 total area in Canada, south of the wheat limit line, is 269 million acres, of 

 which about 115 million acres are unoccupied, but much the greater part of 

 this unoccupied area is over 20 miles from a railway line. 



" The immense possibilities of wheat production in Canada are foreshadowed 

 when it is remembered that the acreage under crop is but a small fraction of 

 that available, but as yet untouched by the plough/' p. 41. 



