Excerpt from Transactions of the Royal Canadian Institute, Vol. 10: 1913-1915
Agriculture is the basic industry of Canada: it is the foundation upon which the Canada of to-day has been built and upon which she to-day rests. As it has been the pioneer occupation in this Dominion, so must it always remain the staple business of our people, influencing and determining by its development and progress the welfare and prosperity of our national life. To-day it employs directly more than half of our population.
Our commerce and our manufactures are directly or indirectly dependent for their expansion upon the country’s harvests: as the latter increase in volume and value so will all other industries assume greater importance. In a word, Canada is essentially an agricultural, a food-producing country; as we are able to place more and more acres of our unoccupied lands under successful tillage, as we are able to profit ably and without impairment of the fertility of our land increase crop yields, so shall we, in a very permanent and eminently satisfactory way, add to the nation’s wealth, not only as regards agricultural products, but in the support and encouragement of every calling and occupation that makes for the country’s good.
Another statement Canada’s cultivable land is her greatest and most valuable asset. And in saying this I am not unmindful of her many natural resources other than productive land, her mineral wealth, her immense forests, her large and valuable fisheries, her unsurpassed water-powers. All these as developed and properly conserved will indeed be ever-increasing sources of wealth, but nevertheless it will be the wealth and life as coming from our farms which will play the most important and vital part, which will contribute most towards the build ing up and prosperity of this country in its national life.
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