MANITOBA AGRICULTURAL
HALL OF FAME

The History of
Agriculture in Manitoba
1812-1995

Prepared by Morris Deveson
February 28, 1995

Agriculture settlement and farming in Manitoba is really not very old, and is young by world standards. Historians like Grant MacEwan, W.L. Morton, J.H. Ellis and others have documented and recorded development over the years. Two aspects of our agricultural development make history particularly interesting, first the rapid progress in technology and secondly the people who made it all happen.

The first recorded Agricultural immigrants in Manitoba were the Selkirk Settlers, also known as the Red River Settlers, who arrived in 1812 and settled near the junction of the Red and Assinboine Rivers, sometimes referred to as the District of Assinboia. These first agricultural settlers arrived by boat via Hudson Bay with little more than the clothes on their backs. They were forced to live off the land, with some help from the fur traders and natives, who really did not make them very welcome. This was fur country. It is hard to believe, in 1995, that Lord Selkirk, who Grant MacEwan called the founder of agriculture in Western Canada, was repeatedly told by both foes and friends alike that his scheme to farm in Western Canada was an adventure in folly, assured only to failure. Fur traders said, "this is fur country. What stupidity to expect settlers to succeed in this land of ice and snow. The country is doomed to external sterility." This was 1812, only 183 years ago.

While the Selkirk Settlers did persevere and survive, farming progress was very slow at first. The settlers of 1812 had 21 Merino sheep and some seeds with them. The sheep either died or were killed for food. In 1813 a bull and yearling heifer arrived from England, by boat and canoe, a journey that took 116 days travelling, plus days for rest. Later more cattle were imported from Europe and the Southern USA. In 1831 two stallions were brought over from England, again by boat and canoe, to be mated with native horses propagated by the Indian tribes. The Selkirk Settlers grew small gardens, including potatoes and small plots of wheat. Frost, floods and grasshoppers were the biggest natural enemy in those days. Meat from buffalo and deer, and fish probably kept these early settlers alive.

The first statistics available are for 1831, when Manitoba recorded having 2,152 cultivated acres, 460 families and a total population of 2,417 people. By 1856, 25 years later, Manitoba recorded 6,523 people. 1,082 families and 8,371 cultivated acres. These figures do not include the native Indian population, and most would live within what is now greater Winnipeg and Selkirk, including Headingly.

The second settlement was at Portage la Prairie when a group moved from Assinboia to the Portage High Bluff area in1853. These settlers however were primarily fur traders. Probably Manitoba's first real farmers were those arriving from Ontario led by John McLean.  On June 13, 1862 John McLean with his wife, mother and six children arrived at Portage by Red River Cart. Anyone wanting to farm, however, was most unpopular and not welcome. Farming would destroy business for trappers and fur traders. He and his family fought off local Indians who stole his horses and tried to drive him off the land. John McLean persevered and became a real farm leader. He was an exhibitor at the first Portage agricultural fair in 1872.

Kenneth McKenzie the first man to introduce purebred cattle to Manitoba, importing Shorthorns, settled about 10 miles west of Portage at Rat Creek, around 1868. Kenneth McKenzie's son, Adam, was the first farmer on what is now known as Beautiful Plains, an area immediately west of the Arden Ridge - now the Arden - Neepawa area, arriving in 1872. It was said that in those days a settler could claim all the land he could plough around in one day with a yolk of oxen. Grant MacEwan in his book "Between the Red and the Rockies" says "when Adam McKenzie, the biggest farm operator of his time, ploughed a furrow around the land he was claiming, it may have been the longest furrow ever cut on the earth's crust." The Beautiful Plains were in the North West Territories in 1872.

Up until 1870, what is now Manitoba was known as Ruperts Land and was essentially governed and regulated by Governors of the Hudson Bay Company. In 1870, the Province of Manitoba was created and admitted into confederation. Towns and urban areas were non-existent and Winnipeg was merely a village of 100 people. The township plan of survey was adopted in 1871, creating square farms. Townships would be six miles square and comprise 36 sections of 640 acres each. The township plan replaced the original Red River survey based on the old Quebec system of long narrow river lots. In 1871, there were 12,288 people in the Red River Settlement and 25,228 in total in Manitoba. With a population of about 2,500, Winnipeg was given a city charter in 1873, while Emerson was incorporated in 1879.  Selkirk, Portage la Prairie and Gladstone followed in 1880 - 81. The first full time Minister of Agriculture for Manitoba was named in 1874.

To encourage agricultural settlement in Western Canada, the Government of Canada, passed the Dominion Lands Act, assented to April 14, 1872. This act created what is now known as the Homestead Act. Under this legislation a person was entitled to claim, for a $10.00 fee, a quarter section (160 acres) on even numbered sections under certain specified conditions. The standard provisions were that the homesteader would reside on the land claimed for a least six months of the year, would establish a permanent residence and would break 40 acres over three years. A second adjacent quarter costing $2 or $2.50 per acre, could be reserved as pre-emption, for a total of half section or 320 acres. Thus many of the original farms in Manitoba were settled as Homesteads and were either 160 or 320 acres in size. The large influx of immigrants from Ontario lobbied the Government of the day for a Municipal form of Government fashioned after the Ontario system. The outcome was the County Municipality Act of 1877, introducing the Ontario Municipal system to Manitoba. This act created a municipal government system based on square sections, townships and ranges. The first county Municipality formed was Westbourne in 1878.

While most of the early settlers were of British origin, including many who came from Ontario, there were several other nationalities represented in our early history. After the settlement in the Portage area came the first Mennonites from Russia. On July 31, 1874, 65 Mennonite families arrived in Winnipeg and settled on land reserved in Steinbach area. In 1876 a reserve was established west of Red River in the Altona - Winkler area. In all approximately 6,000 Mennonites came to Manitoba between 1874 and 1879.

1875 saw French settlers arrive from Massachusetts and Quebec with the aid of the French Colonization Aid Society. They settled in St. Malo, St. Pierre Jolys, St. Jean, Ste. Anne, Lettelier and other communities, mainly along the Red and Rat Rivers. Also in 1875, a group of 285 Icelanders established a settlement at Gimili (meaning Paradise in Icelandic) where they were able to combine farming and fishing as a way of life.

While settlement and population growth had been slow up to the 1870s, the next fifteen years saw most of southern Manitoba settled. This was the time when Manitoba also saw the first explosion in the introduction of agricultural technology. The Ontario plow introduced by the earliest settlers was not good enough for the heavy Red River clay. While all the early breaking had been done with the oxen, they were gradually replaced by horses when better quality fodder, like oats became available. The introduction of the mechanical drill, the sulky and gang ploughs with chilled steel mould boards, the self binding reaper, the steamed thresher and barbed wire combined in the late 1870's to make prairie farming both possible and profitable. By 1878 -79 all the new machinery and the new cheap fencing material had appeared on Manitoba farms.

Most of what is now southwest Manitoba was settled between 1878 and 1885, mostly by immigrants from Ontario and Britain. Some 40,000 immigrants arrived in Manitoba between 1876 and 1881.

In the fall of 1876, 857 +1/6 bushels of "hard" Red Fife wheat were gathered in and consigned to Ontario for seed, with 1876 being the first year Manitoba had a surplus of grain. By 1885 Manitoba was regularly exporting high quality wheat and flour from Red Fife wheat. Red Fife had now replaced the "beaver" which had drawn the fur traders westward to begin Manitoba's history. Wheat was to remain the No. 1 export commodity of Manitoba's Agriculture for many years.

As new land was settled in the west, it became necessary to find an earlier maturing wheat variety to replace Red Fife, which too often was damaged by frost. Canada's research program made Marquis wheat available to framers in 1910, a variety of high quality but with earlier maturity. Following marquis, many new varieties have been developed which overcame problems like rust and other diseases, keeping Manitoba's wheat some of the best in the world.

Livestock was always deemed to be an essential part of farming, and starting with the Selkirk Settlers, horses, cattle (both dairy and beef), hogs and sheep were gradually introduced and increased. For many years livestock production was mainly for local use - not exported from Manitoba.

Immigration and settlement continued and the late 1890's and early 1900's saw immigrants from the Ukraine enter Manitoba in large numbers. The first mass immigration began in1896 and by 1914 over 30,000 Ukrainians had settled in Manitoba. The immigration of Polish people closely paralleled the Ukrainian settlement, joining the Ukrainian communities. For a couple of reasons, the Ukrainians and Poles tended to settle in the park belt and wooded areas. Firstly, most of the prime farmland had been claimed by earlier settlers and secondly, they chose wooded land, which could provide fuel and building materials.

One last group to be mentioned here is the Hutterites, a Protestant Christian sect committed to communal colony life. Manitoba's colonies are primarily Agricultural and usually include both large livestock and grain operations. Steeped in tradition and dedicated to hard work, the number of colonies has grown from 6 in 1918, their start in Manitoba to 97 producing colonies in 1994. As an indication of the Hutterites impact on agriculture in Manitoba, in 1994 the colonies produced approximately 36% of Manitoba's hogs, 31% of commercial turkey production and 33% of Manitoba's eggs.

The number of farms in Manitoba continued to grow until 1941 and peaked at 58,024 when the average farm size was 291 acres. The decline in numbers had been relatively steady since 1941. In 1991 there were 25,706 farms with an average size of 743 acres.

While Manitoba's earliest settlers arrived in this country with little more than a vision and the desire to succeed, the introduction and adoption of new technology had always been important to farmers. Oxen quickly replace hand labour and horses then replaced oxen as a source of power on the farms. Steam engines were introduced in the 1870's, being used mainly for threshing. Gas tractors were introduced around 1910, and even though a wide variety of tractors were produced, they only gradually replaced the horse as a means of power. Many farmers considered horses to be a cheaper form of power. Horses working in fields were a common sight till the end of the Second World War.

Since the Second World War, there have been many changes revolutionizing farming in general. Probably the most important was the introduction of electricity to farms. Nothing did more to standardize farm and urban living than electricity. In 1941, only 480 farms had electricity but by 1950 more than 20,000 farms were serviced with electric power through a program launched in 1946 by the Manitoba Power Commission aimed at bringing electricity to most rural areas. By 1954 the aggressive program was nearly complete. Electricity made it possible to do many more things on the farm.

The era saw the introduction of chemicals for field crop weed control. One of the first chemicals discovered, and still used today in large amounts, is the chemical 2,4-D that was first registered in 1947 to kill broad-leaved weeds in cereal crops such as wheat and barley. Since that time dozens of herbicides, insecticides and fungicides have been registered for very specific uses and nearly every weed, insect and disease problem can be controlled with the use of these chemicals.

While wheat, barley and oats, along with some flax and hay for livestock, dominated Western Agriculture until the 1940's, new crops like rapeseed (now named canola), sunflowers, buckwheat, field peas, and more recently lentils, field beans, potatoes and vegetables have become very important cash crops for farmers. In fact, canola has been such a cinderella crop that dollar wise, canola in 1994 rivals wheat as the no. 1 crop in Manitoba.

Commercial fertilizers have continually grown in importance. The combination of soil testing, new fertilizer formulations and application methods combined with chemicals and crop rotations, has nearly eliminated summerfallow in Manitoba.

Since World War II, mechanization on farms has flourished. Tractors have continually increased in size, as have machines such as self-propelled combines, swathers, seeding and tillage equipment. Until the 1930's, a half section farm was a full years work for many farm families. In 1994 many farmers will both seed and combine a half section in one day.

In some ways the most dramatic change in Manitoba's agriculture since the 1870's is the size and scope of our livestock operations. In 1994 we have hog farms producing 16,000 market hogs per year. We have one family farm with 400 milk cows and 17 farms with more than 150 milk cows, three Manitoba farms have 50,000 laying hens and two farms each produce approximately 325,000 broilers per year. Manitoba is now a net exporter of most livestock and poultry products.

Agriculture is one of Manitoba's most important industries, to many the most important. The gross value of agricultural production in 1993 was 2.18 billion dollars. Without highly skilled and dedicated farmers, such production would not be possible. While it was impossible for people like Lord Selkirk and John McLean to know what lie ahead for agriculture in Manitoba, during these 183 years, a combination of dedicated farm families, visionary farm leaders and skilled agricultural researchers have turned the "land of ice and snow" into one of the major food producing areas in the world.
 

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