2 CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON LANDS, COMMISSION OF CONSERVATION 



2 GEuKGE v., A. 1912 



meuts, and twenty other men chosen because of some peculiar fitness, from experience 

 or training or position, to render good service to Conservation. The Committee 

 on Lands is composed of eight of these members, together with the ex-officio members. 

 The present work of the Committee on Lands of that Commission is an investiga- 

 tion as to how the resources of the farrns can be utilized and conserved in the very 

 best way. When the Commission held its first meeting in 1910, the Committee on 

 Lands made a provisional report to this effect : That it should begin its work by the 

 collection of information by investigations and by the testimony of farmers and 

 others, (a) as to whether agricultural lands are being depleted of fertility or are 

 being improved in that respect, and (&) as to whether there is a dangerous prevalence 

 of weeds and other hindrances to the progress of profitable farming. That was to 

 be one part of our work — one of the six parts — and that is the part I propose to deal 

 with this morning. 



The investigation was begun during 1910, when 985 farms were visited and 

 examined. It was not considered a good plan to confine an investigation of a matter 

 like this to a few areas or to small areas. From such sources the information might 

 be so incomplete as to be misleading and of little value. Therefore, 985 farms were 

 examined in 1910 on the basis of about 100 in each province, and in groups of about 

 SO or more farms adjoining each other in each district. The examination was under- 

 taken with the co-operation of the Provincial Departments of Agriculture, and they 

 suggested the names of men whose knowledge of local conditions enabled them to get 

 into close touch with these farmers. The information obtained was the joint result 

 of the observations of the collector, and of the farmer himself. The main impressions 

 left on our minds from the first survey may be stated in two sentences: While a 

 systematic rotation of crops is essential to permanent good farming, on only nine 

 percent of all the farms examined was such a plan followed in 1910. And the reports 

 revealed in detail, in such a manner as to carry conviction, that weeds are very 

 prevalent — dangerously prevalent. That is a very grave state of affairs. 



After recent observations in the United Kingdom, and also in France, Switzer- 

 land, Germany and Denmark — and to enable me to get more complete and useful 

 knowledge of the rural conditions in these countries, I travelled by road over 3,000 

 miles in June, July and August — I was very much impressed with the notable 

 differences between the appearance of the farm fields in Europe and in Canada. A 

 real weedy farm, with the exception of one limited area in Bavaria, was an xmcommon 

 spectacle. On the other hand, if you take the train from Ottawa to Montreal, or 

 from any other centre in Canada for a distance of fifty or a hundred miles, to see 

 reasonably clean farms or fields, that seem so to your eyes from the windows of the 

 railway car, is the exception rather than the rule. I make this point now: in those 

 countries and on those lands where weeds are kept in check or are becoming less 

 harmful, some systematic rotation of crops is the common practice; and in our 

 country where weeds are increasing in the most alarming way, a systematic rotation 

 of crops is the exception — amounting to only nine per cent of the 985 farms visited 

 in 1910. The survey in 1910 brought out this conviction from the summing up of 

 the information obtained: that if farmers on the average had carried on their work 

 according to the systems and methods followed by fifty of the best farmers whose 

 farms were examined, they would have doubled the output of their crops from the 

 same area. That is one of the convictions borne in on my mind, one of the con- 

 victions leading to hope, from the survey in 1910. 



SUnVEY OF FARMS IN 1911. 



In 1911 we made a more extended survey. We had the advantage during the 

 whole of 1911 of the services of Mr. Nunnick, the Agriculturist to the Commission 

 of Conservation. The members who serve on the Commission, and on the Committee 



