130 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



B. The Relation of Climate to the Productivity of Land 



34. AGRICULTURE'S "FARTHEST NORTH" 1 

 BY W. P. RUTTER 



It has been denied that wheat can be raised in Canada north of 

 55 degrees north latitude, but this notion has had to be abandoned, 

 for wheat is gradually creeping nearer and nearer to the Arctic Circle. 

 At Sitka, Alaska, 56 degrees north latitude, spring wheat matured 

 in 1900 and 1901. In the Peace River Valley wheat has been success- 

 fully grown for some years past, and at Fort Vermilion, north latitude 

 58.4 degrees, there is a roller mill whose capacity is thirty-five barrels 

 per day, and the wheat ground in this mill is all grown in the vicinity. 

 Wheat has been harvested at Fort Simpson, in north latitude 61.8 

 degrees, and at Dawson City, 64 degrees north latitude, wheat has 

 matured in favorable seasons. In the more northerly tracts, however, 

 present factors show that the chances of failure are too many for 

 wheat cultivation to be a commercial success. 



A fact of peculiar interest is that the summer season in the basin 

 of the Mackenzie River is nearly as warm as in Alberta. At Edmon- 

 ton and Calgary the mean summer temperature is 59 F., at Dunvegan, 

 58 F., at Fort Chippewyan, 59 F., and at Fort Simpson, 57 F. The 

 explanation lies chiefly in the fact that the insolation, or heat received 

 from the sun, scarcely varies about midsummer between the parallels 

 of latitude 40 and 60 degrees; the larger number of hours the sun is 

 above the horizon in the higher latitudes very nearly balancing the 

 effect of less direct solar radiation. Southern Alberta has a much 

 milder winter than the rest of Northwest Canada. The cold becomes 

 greater to the eastward, and northward the change is even more 

 rapid, and in strong contrast to the small variation during the sum- 

 mer: Calgary, 17?! F.; Edmonton, 13 F.; Dunvegan, i F.; Fort 

 Chippewyan, 5 F. ; and Fort Simpson, 13 F. But it is the spring 

 and summer which are the important seasons to the wheat-growers of 

 Northwest Canada. 



Throughout the region the spring is short and the farmer must 

 utilize fully every day from the last days of March to the last days 

 of April. In Eastern Canada, where the snowfall is heavy and often 

 packed by thaws, the farmer waits until the snows melt and the frost 

 is out of the ground before commencing spring seeding. Not so in 



1 Adapted from Wheat Growing in Canada, the United States, and the Argentine 

 (Adam and Charles Black, London), pp. 4-5, 44-46, 54, 59. 



