108 RURAL LIFE IN CANADA 



the soil, to be bred into the bone and fibre of the people ; 

 and they are the first requisite for good farming."* 

 These considerations apply to every successive requisite 

 for betterment, and make the problem fundamentally 

 a problem for the church. 



Care, too, for the conservation of fertility, we must 

 have. Canada apparently ranks fairly well in produc- 

 tion per acre. Measured by yield of wheat, our 

 average per acre in 1911 was 19.5 bushels, whereas that 

 of Russia was 8, of the United States 12.6, of France 

 20.5 bushels. Yet our standing in productiveness is 

 only apparent. We seem to be doing fairly well 

 because we are bringing virgin land by the million 

 acres under crop, thus keeping average up. But how 

 does even that average compare with Britain'^ 32.6 or 

 Denmark's 44.8 bushels to the acre ? 



Our fresh-turned prairie sod affords a yield above 

 Europe's best. What would it not mean to us if such 

 fertility were maintained ? And it could well be. The 

 pity of the present situation, with rapid depletion of 

 fertility, is that it is quite unnecessary. Not only so, 

 but fertility once lost can be restored. Two hundred 

 years ago the yield of wheat in England was eight 

 bushel? to the acre. During the last fifty years it has 

 a. \vraged from thirty to forty bushels. The possibili- 

 ties for Ontario, whose average in 1910 was 25.2 bushels 

 f-n- fall wheat, and for spring wheat 20.19 bushels, 

 . shown by yields obtained at the Experimental Farm 

 a Guelph. Fourteen varieties of wheat which had 

 been under test for sixteen successive years gave in 1911 

 an average yield of 50.5 measured bushels of 62.2 Ibs. 



* Prof. T. N. Carver, " Rural Economy a Factor in the Suc- 

 cess of the Church," p. 15. 



