Agricultural History. Vol. 3 of The History of the Prairie West Series (review)

In this volume Gregory Marchildon has assembled eighteen papers previously published in the journal Prairie Forum. That is, at one and the same time, the strength and the weakness of the book. Prairie Forum is not the most widely recognized journal, so for many readers it will be convenient to have these papers republished in a single volume, with a common focus. On the other hand, because the selection is restricted to articles that have been published in this one journal, the reader is presented with a rather unsystematic smattering of items.

Of the eighteen chapters, three deal with the earliest developments in prairie agriculture. The opening chapter, by Lewis Thomas, although titled "A History of Agriculture on the Prairies to 1914," is primarily about the earliest development and is very thin on the main settlement period. No fewer than six of the chapters deal with the cattle industry. Since these were written initially as independent articles, there is, not surprisingly, quite a bit of overlap. Yet there remain gaps and contradictions. For example, A.B. McCullough tells us that 'ranching is not inherently a capital-intensive, large-scale industry' and that 'ranching in the Foothills probably would have developed without the large infusion of capital which came in the 1880s,' but then goes on to discuss the size and sources of the large capital infusion. The authors of these chapters describe at length the story of the large ranches, and how so many of them met their demise, but leave us wondering how it could be that after 1914 Alberta went on to be a bigger producer of beef cattle than in the heyday of the great ranches.

Four chapters on grain farming would seem to be a skimpy allocation to how the Canadian prairies came to be the world's leading exporter of wheat, but then the editor was tied to what had been published in Prairie Forum. Two of the papers on grain, however, have received wide recognition as important contributions to our understanding of the development of farming on the prairies. These are Lyle Dick's paper on farm-making costs, and Tony Ward's paper on the evolving technology of grain farming and the implications for farm size. Grain farming also lies in the background of three rather narrowly focused chapters on the marketing of wheat. These are more concerned with the politics of grain marketing and do not do much to enlighten the reader through the analysis of the grain marketing system. Rather, they tend to assume a knowledge of it. A final chapter on journalism and the politics of the post-Second World War Canada-United Kingdom Wheat Agreement appears to be there just to round out space in the volume.

What is notably lacking is a freshly written, substantial, and comprehensive introductory essay on prairie agriculture. That would have done a lot to give context to the republished papers. That could also have shown how these papers fit into the wider literature on prairie agriculture. The editor, Gregory Marchildon, is someone who could well have written such a substantial and useful introduction. That would have made the book much more valuable.