Download or read book When Wheat Was King written by André Magnan and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2016-03-05 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the course of a century, the Canadian Prairies went from being the breadbasket of the world to but one of many grain-growing regions in a vast global agri-food system. Magnan traces the causes and consequences of this evolution, from the first transatlantic shipments of wheat to the controversial dismantling of the Canadian Wheat Board. When Wheat Was King reveals how farmers, governments, and consumers, over successive periods, responded to industrialization, international trade rules set by the US, the liberalization of global markets, and the consolidation of corporate power. The result is a fascinating look at how regional, national, and international politics have influenced agriculture and food industries in Canada, the UK, and around the world.
Download or read book The Rise and Fall of United Grain Growers written by Paul D. Earl and published by Univ. of Manitoba Press. This book was released on 2019-10-18 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For much of the twentieth century, United Grain Growers was one of the major forces in Canadian agriculture. Founded in 1906, for much of its history UGG worked to give western farmers a “third way” between the competing poles of cooperatives like the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool and the private sector. At its peak, more than 800 UGG elevators dotted the Canadian prairies and the company had become a part of western Canada’s cultural psyche. By 2001, then known as Agricore United, it was the largest grain company on the Prairies. The UGG’s history illuminates many of the intense debates over policy and philosophy that dominated the grain industry. After the Second World War, it would be a key player as the western Canadian grain industry expanded into new international markets. Through the rest of the century, it played an important role in resolving major disputes over regulation and grain transportation policy. Despite its many innovations, the company’s final decade and eventual demise illustrated the tensions at the heart of the grain industry. In 1997, to finance the rebuilding of its grain elevator network, UGG went public and entered equity markets. While successful at first, this strategy also weakened the company’s cooperative structure. In 2007, it was purchased by Saskatchewan Pool in a hostile takeover. The disappearance of Agricore United marked the end of a century of voluntary farmer-control of the grain business in western Canada. Paul Earl’s history reveals UGG’s central role in the growth and transformation of the western grain industry at a critical period. With meticulous research supplemented by interviews with many of the key players, he also delves into the details and the debates over the company’s demise.
Download or read book Grain by Grain written by Bob Quinn and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A compelling agricultural story skillfully told; environmentalists will eat it up." - Kirkus Reviews When Bob Quinn was a kid, a stranger at a county fair gave him a few kernels of an unusual grain. Little did he know, that grain would change his life. Years later, after finishing a PhD in plant biochemistry and returning to his family’s farm in Montana, Bob started experimenting with organic wheat. In the beginning, his concern wasn’t health or the environment; he just wanted to make a decent living and some chance encounters led him to organics. But as demand for organics grew, so too did Bob’s experiments. He discovered that through time-tested practices like cover cropping and crop rotation, he could produce successful yields—without pesticides. Regenerative organic farming allowed him to grow fruits and vegetables in cold, dry Montana, providing a source of local produce to families in his hometown. He even started producing his own renewable energy. And he learned that the grain he first tasted at the fair was actually a type of ancient wheat, one that was proven to lower inflammation rather than worsening it, as modern wheat does. Ultimately, Bob’s forays with organics turned into a multimillion dollar heirloom grain company, Kamut International. In Grain by Grain, Quinn and cowriter Liz Carlisle, author of Lentil Underground, show how his story can become the story of American agriculture. We don’t have to accept stagnating rural communities, degraded soil, or poor health. By following Bob’s example, we can grow a healthy future, grain by grain.
Download or read book Canada s Wheat King written by Jim Shilliday and published by University of Regina Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The life of Seager Wheeler is one of the most significant--albeit nearly forgotten--Canadian success stories. He was North America's most celebrated wheat developer, whose varieties in the 1920s made up 40 percent of the world's wheat exports, and contributed wealth to most facets of the Canadian economy. His most publicized accomplishment was being crowned World Wheat King an unsurpassed five times, from 1911 to 1918.
Download or read book The Canadian Wheat Board written by Andrew Schmitz and published by University of Regina Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Canadian Wheat Board is a monopoly seller of western Canadian wheat, durum, and barley for human consumption, and feed wheat for export. In this study, the authors first examine Canada's position in the world wheat & barley markets and the Board's role relative to multinational grain companies (MGCs). Chapter 3 presents the regulatory framework governing the Canadian grain industry. The single- desk selling concept of the Board is examined from a theoretical perspective in chapter 4. This chapter also describes the structure of the world wheat & barley trade in which MGCs play key roles. Recent changes in government policies in the US, the European Union, and Canada are discussed in chapter 5. Chapter 6 discusses state trading in grain, the World Trade Organization (WTO) attempts to discipline state trading enterprises, and the Board's impact on trade in the WTO context. Chapter 7 covers the numerous confrontations concerning Canada-US grain trade. Chapter 8 focuses on the debate over creation of a dual market for feed barley. Chapter 9 examines the Charter of Rights case brought against the Board by barley producers & organizations. The focus of chapter 10 is grain transportation, its regulatory framework, and the Board's roles in the grain transportation system. Chapter 11 examines the Board's economic performance. Chapter 12 discusses the marketing of flax and canola in order to better understand how the Board can achieve price premiums and eliminate inefficiencies when marketing grains. The Board's ability to introduce additional price & marketing flexibility is discussed in chapter 13, including the implications of providing the option for using futures markets. Chapter 14 explores the debate over dual marketing and its viability for western Canadian grain producers. The final chapter draws overall conclusions.
Download or read book Agricultural History written by Gregory P. Marchildon and published by University of Regina Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The eighteen essays selected for this volume of the History of the Prairie West Series all focus on the agricultural history of the Canadian Plains. They cover a detailed survey of First Nations agricultural practices, agriculture during the fur trade era, and the history of ranching and the evolution as fenced-in farm settlements supplanted the open range." -- from publisher.
Download or read book Wheat Kings written by Greg McDonnell and published by Erin, Ont. : Boston Mills Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the twenty-first century marches forward, the country grain elevator rapidly nears extinction. These classic wooden structures once used to store grain are being torn down by the hundreds along with thousands of miles of railway branchlines. A proud and honored way of life is coming to end. Wheat Kings is a lavishly illustrated and poignantly written look at the passing of the traditional northern prairie grain elevators and the communities and railcars that served them. The book includes photographs of grain elevators from numerous small prairie towns. Also included are images of the region's train stations, churches, farms and commercial buildings, many abandoned. The book is organized by six concise essays. These include: Wheat Kings: brief history of grain elevators Of Peddlers, Pullers and Tramps: the prairie railroad system Something Big on the Horizon: concrete high-capacity super elevators McMahon - Hard Times on the Prairies: a forgotten town The Last Harvest: an elevator comes down Buffalo Bones: the end of the railroad grain cars. Wheat Kings is a chronicle of the end of an era as witnessed by one of North America's best-known and most-respected railroad writers and photographers. This book is sure to fascinate railway enthusiasts, transportation historians, and anyone interested in the changing worlds of farming and railroading.
Download or read book The Canadian Grain Trade 1931 1951 written by Duncan A. MacGibbon and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 1952-12-15 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces in an accurate and objective manner the sequence of events during the last twenty years which have influenced the organization fo the Canadian grain trade. During these years problems arising out of the production and marketing of western grain have been under continuous review in Canada, leading at different times to royal commissions of inquiry. The production and sale of cereals have become such a vital part of the economic life of the three prairie provinces and, indeed, of Canada, that anything affecting this great industry becomes at once a subject of general interest. These twenty years have witnessed momentous changes. The period marks a shift from free trading on the open market to the compulsory marketing of Canadian wheat and other grains through the medium of a Federal board endowed with wide powers. Basically, this change stems from conditions arising out of the Great Depression and World War II. And in one form or another the Canadian Wheat Board will continue to be a significant factor in the marketing of Canadian wheat. Noteworth also have been the dramatic recovery of the Pools and the negotiation of international agreements; and, on the farm front, the establishment of a permit system to control deliveries of grain to country elevators, and the enactment of legislation to protect producers against losses arising from the hazards of nature.
Download or read book Plenty written by Alisa Smith and published by Clarkson Potter. This book was released on 2008-04-22 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The remarkable, amusing and inspiring adventures of a Canadian couple who make a year-long attempt to eat foods grown and produced within a 100-mile radius of their apartment. When Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon learned that the average ingredient in a North American meal travels 1,500 miles from farm to plate, they decided to launch a simple experiment to reconnect with the people and places that produced what they ate. For one year, they would only consume food that came from within a 100-mile radius of their Vancouver apartment. The 100-Mile Diet was born. The couple’s discoveries sometimes shook their resolve. It would be a year without sugar, Cheerios, olive oil, rice, Pizza Pops, beer, and much, much more. Yet local eating has turned out to be a life lesson in pleasures that are always close at hand. They met the revolutionary farmers and modern-day hunter-gatherers who are changing the way we think about food. They got personal with issues ranging from global economics to biodiversity. They called on the wisdom of grandmothers, and immersed themselves in the seasons. They discovered a host of new flavours, from gooseberry wine to sunchokes to turnip sandwiches, foods that they never would have guessed were on their doorstep. The 100-Mile Diet struck a deeper chord than anyone could have predicted, attracting media and grassroots interest that spanned the globe. The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating tells the full story, from the insights to the kitchen disasters, as the authors transform from megamart shoppers to self-sufficient urban pioneers. The 100-Mile Diet is a pathway home for anybody, anywhere. Call me naive, but I never knew that flour would be struck from our 100-Mile Diet. Wheat products are just so ubiquitous, “the staff of life,” that I had hazily imagined the stuff must be grown everywhere. But of course: I had never seen a field of wheat anywhere close to Vancouver, and my mental images of late-afternoon light falling on golden fields of grain were all from my childhood on the Canadian prairies. What I was able to find was Anita’s Organic Grain & Flour Mill, about 60 miles up the Fraser River valley. I called, and learned that Anita’s nearest grain suppliers were at least 800 miles away by road. She sounded sorry for me. Would it be a year until I tasted a pie? —From The 100-Mile Diet
Download or read book The Prairie West Historical Readings written by R. Douglas Francis and published by University of Alberta. This book was released on 1992 with total page 776 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of 35 readings on Canadian prairie history includes overview interpretation and current research on topics such as the fur trade, native peoples, ethnic groups, status of women, urban and rural society, the Great Depression and literature and art.
Download or read book Theory and Practice in the History of European Expansion Overseas written by R. F. Holland and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-08-12 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 1988. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book Amber Waves written by Catherine Zabinski and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A biography of a staple grain we often take for granted, exploring how wheat went from wild grass to a world-shaping crop. At breakfast tables and bakeries, we take for granted a grain that has made human civilization possible, a cereal whose humble origins belie its world-shaping power: wheat. Amber Waves tells the story of a group of grass species that first grew in scattered stands in the foothills of the Middle East until our ancestors discovered their value as a source of food. Over thousands of years, we moved their seeds to all but the polar regions of Earth, slowly cultivating what we now know as wheat, and in the process creating a world of cuisines that uses wheat seeds as a staple food. Wheat spread across the globe, but as ecologist Catherine Zabinski shows us, a biography of wheat is not only the story of how plants ensure their own success: from the earliest bread to the most mouthwatering pasta, it is also a story of human ingenuity in producing enough food for ourselves and our communities. Since the first harvest of the ancient grain, we have perfected our farming systems to grow massive quantities of food, producing one of our species’ global mega crops—but at a great cost to ecological systems. And despite our vast capacity to grow food, we face problems with undernourishment both close to home and around the world. Weaving together history, evolution, and ecology, Zabinski’s tale explores much more than the wild roots and rise of a now-ubiquitous grain: it illuminates our complex relationship with our crops, both how we have transformed the plant species we use as food, and how our society—our culture—has changed in response to the need to secure food sources. From the origins of agriculture to gluten sensitivities, from our first selection of the largest seeds from wheat’s wild progenitors to the sequencing of the wheat genome and genetic engineering, Amber Waves sheds new light on how we grow the food that sustains so much human life.
Download or read book Wheat Trading Practices Competitive Conditions Between U S and Canadian Wheat Inv 332 429 written by and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Fighting for the Farm written by Jane Adams and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2013-03-26 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In North America industrial agriculture has now virtually displaced diversified family farming. The prevailing system depends heavily on labor supplied by migrants and immigrants, and its reliance on monoculture raises environmental concerns. In this book Jane Adams and contributors—anthropologists and political scientists among them—analyze the political dynamics that have transformed agriculture in the United States and Canada since the 1920s. The contributors demonstrate that people become politically active in arenas that range from the state to public discourse to relations between growers and their contractors or laborers, and that politics is a process that is intimately local as well as global. The farm financial crisis of the 1980s precipitated rapid consolidation of farms and a sharp decline in rural populations. It brought new actors into the political process, including organic farmers and environmentalists. Fighting for the Farm: Rural America Transformed considers the politics of farm policy and the consequences of the increasing alignment of agricultural interests with the global economy. The first section of the book places North American agriculture in the context of the world system; the second, a series of case studies, examines the foundations of current U.S. policy; subsequent sections deal with the political implications for daily life and the politics of the environment. Recognizing the influence of an array of political constituencies and arenas, Fighting for the Farm charts a decisive shift since the early part of the twentieth century from a discursive regime rooted in economics to one that now incorporates a variety of environmental and quality-of-life concerns.
Download or read book Two Gun Cohen written by Daniel S. Levy and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2002-04 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Unifarm written by Carrol L. Jaques and published by University of Calgary Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jaques recounts the tumultuous history of the Alberta farm organization, Unifarm. This book documents Alberta farmers' quest to increase control over the forces that have had such an impact on their lives and describes how it led them to form organizations which have afforded them measures of stability and security throughout the past century.
Download or read book Business Industry written by Gregory P. Marchildon and published by University of Regina Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fourth volume of the History of the Prairie West Series contains fifteen articles examining the rich history of business and early industry in Canada's Prairie Provinces prior to the Great Depression. Without denying the central importance of agriculture in the development and growth of the early Prairie West, the essays in Business and Inudstry explore the lesser known history of some of the earliest businesses in the region. As we enter the second decade of the twenty-first century, a time when the three Prairie Provinces comprise the fastest-growing, and perhaps the most dynamic, economic regions in Canada, it may be worthwhile to cast our gaze back to an earlier and simpler era. In these essays, we can glimpse the origins of the entrepreneurial spirit and business ehtos that have come to define the business culture of the Prairie West.
