Canadian Agriculture. 



157 



In 1 89 1 agriculture maintained about 45 per cent, of 

 the total population of Canada ; the occupiers of land 

 numbered 620,000, comprising 525,000 owners and 93,000 

 tenant farmers. At the same period the area under the princi- 

 pal cereal crops amounted to 7,700,000 acres, of which wheat 

 covered 2,724,000 acres, barley, 881,000 acres, and oats 

 4,128,000 acres. Half of the surface sown with wheat and 

 oats, and over two-thirds of that under barley, lay at that 

 time in the province of Ontario. Manitoba ranked next in 

 the production of the staple bread-cereal, and Quebec filled 

 the second place as a producer of oats. The estimated aggre- 

 gate yield of wheat in the Dominion in the census year was 

 about 42,000,000 bushels, half of which was grown in Ontario 

 and all but five million bushels of the remainder in Manitoba. 

 Later statistics have not been collected for the whole ot 

 Canada, but in the two provinces just mentioned the acreage 

 and produce of the principal crops are estimated annually, 

 and from these estimates some idea may be gat hered of the 

 present position of farming in the country. Since 1890 the 

 area under wheat in Ontario has declined by about 300,000 

 acres, but concurrently with this contraction there has been 

 an expansion of over one hundred thousand acres in the 

 Manitoban acreage, and apparently some extension in British 

 Columbia. 



One feature of Canadian agriculture has been the gradual 

 movement of the centre of wheat cultivation towards the 

 west. In the older settlements, east of Lake Winnipeg, a more 

 diversified system of farming is gradually displacing cereals, 

 with the exception of oats. Barley, which was formerly 

 grown to a considerable extent in Ontario for export, occupies 

 a steadily decreasing acreage, and hitherto the crop has not 

 been cultivated on a large scale in any other province. 

 Oats, on the other hand, continue to be grown on a larger 

 surface yearly, both for home consumption and for exporta- 

 tion. In Manitoba and the south of the North-M^est 

 Territories there is an immense tract of fine wheat-growing 

 land, known as the Red River Valley, extending across the 

 boundary into Dakota and Minnesota. The greater part of 

 this region has yet to be brought under the plough, and 



