The Western Producer takes a weekly look at some of the stories that made headlines in issues of the paper from 75, 50, 25 and 10 years ago.
75 years ago: Sept. 5, 1940
Farm and business leaders from Western Canada met with federal government officials to talk about how to help farmers who couldn’t market their grain because of the war. Meanwhile, Saskatchewan Wheat Pool announced it was building 400 temporary annexes that could accommodate 10 million bushels of grain. As well, the prairie wheat pools were forecasting a 50 million bu. wheat crop: 254 million bu. in Saskatchewan, 195 bu. in Alberta and 60 million bu. in Manitoba.
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The 1940 spring pig crop was 39 percent bigger than the previous year, resulting in a record 4,882,000 hogs on Canadian farms as of June 1. As well, farmers were expecting 27 percent more sows to farrow in fall.
50 years ago: Sept. 2, 1965
The Prairies expected a record wheat harvest of 731,868,000 bu.: 460 million bu. in Saskatchewan, 185 million bu. in Alberta and 86,868,000 bu. in Manitoba.
The previous record year was 1963, when farmers harvested 723,400,000 bu. of wheat.
Saskatchewan premier Ross Thatcher said he wanted the province to develop a farm implement manufacturing industry and planned to try interesting British companies in the venture during a trip overseas. Discers and cultivators might be turned out in quantity in Saskatchewan, he added, “but I don’t think manufacturing of combines and tractors would be feasible.”
25 years ago: Sept. 6, 1990
Agriculture Canada’s proposal to slaughter 4,800 bison in and around Wood Buffalo National Park in northeastern Alberta and the Northwest Territories was endorsed by a federal environmental assessment and review panel. The controversial $22 million plan was designed to reduce the risk of infectious brucellosis and tuberculosis in Canada’s cattle herd.
Lorraine and Brian Taylor of Darwell, Alta., were among 30 producers who were visited by film crews during the summer for the production of a Soviet television program about the Canadian family farm. The Soviet government was considering family farms as an alternative to collective farms as it moved to decentralize agriculture under a policy of economic restructuring (perestroika).
10 years ago: sept. 1, 2005
A cattle producer near Chaplin, Sask., made a grisly discovery following a fierce electrical storm. Steve Hughes found nine cows and five calves dead in a single line along a barbed-wire fence. The cattle were standing close enough to the fence or to each other that when one cow was struck in the head, they all went down.
Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Ron Friesen was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident on the Trans-Canada Highway near Winnipeg. He fractured four vertebrae in his neck, broke several ribs and suffered a concussion. Friesen recovered and today is a senior official with Farmers of North America.
bruce.dyck@producer.com
