‘HE CPR’s Transcontinental No. 4 whistled its way eastwards across the Saskatchewan and Manitoba plains. Off in the dis- fant field the tractors rumbled ross the land, some drawing SWathers, others the occasional Combine. ‘The Harvest of 1954 | Was beginning. : One could see the awkward- king combines, mostly Massey- Harris or Cockshutt, bumping Oss the prairies, their. high %00ked funnels spitting out dust and chaff, looking for all. the World like some prehistoric Monsters snuffling up the grain. Harvesting would be in full ‘Wing anytime now we were told, With farmers keeping their fin- ' 8€Ys crossed against all the things that could go wrong — rust, frost, nore rain, flooding, machinery breakdown. And at the end of the road the Nawing uncertainty about wheth- @ the fruits of their toil would | ‘sold. if not sold then the Messing problem of where to Store their wheat, barley or oats Ma year which would see to- Sether With last vear’s carryover “1 esimated billion bushels of Wheat alone. ‘ This is the time of year farm- ty go crazy,” a Wynyard, a atchewan, grain grower told » Outlining the problems he “eed on the eve of the harvest. piveen it comes time to “take ag you can’t speak 0, a cr. and woe betide the itin- pa Salesman who comes knock- i NS on the door with a gadget to Sel] 1s work far into the night, 24 Ws at a stretch oftentimes, in Q at Tush to clear the fields be- the elements act up. * Were lucky enough to get Rg to farmers in the Wyn- rea during the pre-harvest 2 talkj lun, a the way up a typical bat- he. Saskatchewan road from c to the farm community, ence that the prairie prov- S Were facing ‘one of the history Tust epidemics in their f. -’ Rust losses may cost the bushels a loss of some 85 million alone, according to top 8ffig; : nails at the Winnipeg plant | logy labs, ~ ag an interview at Saskatoon Jam Week Agriculture Minister *s Gardiner acknowledged foy . US is Canada’s worst year Dreag He said that rust had Ven b Over a wider area than tig Bore and it was of a par- Man. ly virulent type which left nels. Wheat heads with few ker- ed last bad rust year was back Sma} %, but the area affected was Rus €r for the bread wheats. eq 4 mould which attacks i: Whe t™s and leaves of growing Thi at, Shrivelling up the seed. Possible losses may to $100 million for Saskat- an alone), Rering® drove north our driver Whi, oy pointed to fields Cag, -SROWed a distinct rusty You’) Walk through that and Moujg x Covered with red sticky Pant po, commented. ; Tue . Of the life cycle of the bug Mould is on the mulberry the th Was told. These thrive in ‘S. and the general talk is Crisis grips the Prairies that windborne spores of the mould are carried up into Can- ada through North Dakota and Montana. Most seeded wheat is of the Thatcher variety, which is not re- sistant to the 15B rust mould. Very few farmers seeded the rust-resistant variety — the Sel- irk brand. One farmer took me alongside a field of Selkirk. it stood proudly, the heavy kernels nodding in the breeze, @ healthy ripe look about it, compared to the rust-colored wheat we had seen earlier. ‘at Wynyard in the . and drove down late afternoon, street which its broad maint aes a population of 1,500 and has the most wonderful em fe all Saskatchewan — 2 tradi 1 brought by the early Icelandic settlers. We stopped at the roe ‘ place in town; George, his ee and two children live in a Sek fortable little place. Unl 6. Be farmer who .lives: and wor gon his land, George 1s 4 grain a mer,” who lives 1 town works a piece of land. He balances the uncertainty ‘e income from wheat-farming ry doing electrical work, see sd er iS farm buildings. I was” 1 that even this form of sage a dwindling as farmers fee pinch of lowered cash incomes. haven't got the o take advant- lectrification,” We arrived “Farmers money this vent age of rura le n Tene told me. “It costs oe $400 on the average to ep transformer pole ae a ae it there, 1f ta - Cnce he has it t i é other $300-$700 to wire the farm.” “J don a seis to A days off a q acres) he told me, ink it’ ibie for % think it’s possibie = ake a living these arter-section”’ (160 explaining his side occupation. Other farmers try to beat the rap with “angles,” as they call it. Some do railroad- ing, others chicken farming, road work and “custom combining.” George pointed out that at thé very minimum it would cost $10,- 000 to start out on the average family quarter-section homestead. Grain-farming was the best bet for him, he said, adding that he rented the land he worked, and was lucky in being able to use his dad’s machinery. Farmers just did not have the necessary $5,000-$6,000 to pick up a combine these days, and they. are making things do by “natching up” the old machinery. Usual practice for a farmer is to buy new pieces of machinery once a year, but not now. Some 25 new combines were still sit- ting in the Wynyard sales lots as * we passed through town. Ready cash in the pocket is way down this year. A measure of it was to be seen in the report that Saskatchewan _ retail sales are down 11 percent — the highest drop of any province in Canada. Another indication has been the rapid expansion on amounts being loaned by the Canadian Farm Loan Board for operations. For the first five months of the 195455 fiscal year a total of $4,- 500,000 has been loaned, almost the entire amount loaned in the 1953-54 year. * Our next visit was to Valdi down the road — a deep-rutted narrow dirt line that weaved its way across the fields. Valdi farms a half-section and is secretary of the 70-member Grand Lodge of the Saskatchewan Farmers Union. He asked me all about what the industrial workers were doing and saying about the wheat sur- pluses. I informed him as best 1 could about the parade of dele- gations to government on unem- ployment. When we left he look- ed at me and said: “Don’t be surprised if you see —By MARK FRANK a lot of farmers down east march- ing up to Parliament Hill.” The idea of a “March to Ot- tawa” is fast maturing in the minds of western wheatgrowers as they contemplate the issue of markets and how to dispose of their produce. One lodge at Numola, we were tceld, had already sent in a resolu- tion to SFU leader J. L.. Phelps. What is needed are dozens more such resolutions and messages to put some fight into the battle for new policies at Ottawa that would open up markets of the world. As one westerner put it during ‘our roundtable chat at the Gis- lasson farm: what’s needed is ans “O.K. Joe (Phelps). Let’s Go!” slogan that would be picked up. across the prairies. Once the crop’s in, this move- ment is bound to gather steam as the enormity of the farm crisis becomes ever clearer to thous- ands of farmers. Gislasson let out a growl of dis- approval when the talk turned to the Wheat Board’s announcement that western farmers will be al- luwed to initially deliver 300 bushels of their 1954 crop. At best this will bring less than $375 in cash, not enough to pay tractor and combine operations let alone taxes and other bills. * “Tt should have been a mini- mum of at least 1,000 bushels,” Gislasson said. Such an amount would bring about $1,200 and meet expenses at the very least. On the Gislasson farm there were already some 800 bushels of stored wheat from last year, and another 500 of barley. De- terioration of the stocks through improper facilities Was an ever- present menace, iowering the price and:in many cases making it entirely useless for sale pur- poses. \ Walter Hanson, another grain’ farmer, ‘put it bluntlv: “The big question out here is what are we going to do with $370? It doesn’t pay to take off the crop at all.” He pointed out he had harvest- PACIFIC TRIBUNE — SEPTEMBER 17, 1954 — PAGE 9 ed a small acreage with only 600 bushels stored. “But some down the way have as much as 20,000 bushels in their granaries.” I asked him for an estimate of the cost of taking off 1,000 bush- els on a small 50-acre undertak- ing. He estimated a possible $400 loss on operations if the wheat was unsold. Federal-provincial aid to pro- vide storage facilities was a vital first step; cash advances for farm stored grain was another. But of _ course the root question was dis- posal of grain stocks — in a word: markets. Mike Stanko, a big wheatgrow- er near Lethbridge told one re- porter recently: “We're in the worst mess ever. All my granaries are filled with 42,000 bushels of wheat from last year. Now we're combining 2,- 200 acres of wheat and it’s run- ning over 25 bushels to the acre. All I can do is keep building more granaries or dump the new wheat on the ground.” * Hardest hit farm country is in north Saskatchewan, around Por- cupine Plain, where Red Deer River flooding and heavy rains have cut down acreage drastical- ly. Only 30 percent of the intend- ed acreage was seeded this year. Of this, much of it is not grow- ing, reducing the total amount that may be harvested to 23 per- cent of what could have been possible. A letter sent to me from a Porcupine Plain resident de- scribes the plight of the farmers there: : “It has been raining two or three times a week regularly and it would seern that there will be no crop here unless there’s a very sudden change for the better. I don’t \know what people will do for hay this year. We are facing very ser- ious times.” é : North of Saskatoon it is a simi- lar story, with whole farms under water. In Saskatoon itself, retail trade is down 35 percent since last November, with 1,100 regis- tered unemployed. Demands for public works and relief programs are being made, but most farmers see this as a stopgap only and one that will not meet the hardship that faces hundreds of farm families, this winter.