Wheat pools in Canada facts for kids
A wheat pool is like a special club for farmers. In this club, farmers work together to sell their grain, mostly wheat. They join forces instead of selling their crops alone.
In Canada, three big wheat pools started in 1923 and 1924. These groups were owned by farmers themselves. Their main goal was to challenge the power of large companies. These companies had controlled the grain business in Western Canada for a long time. Farmers felt these big businesses were unfair.
From 1923 to 1929, the wheat pools were very successful. They were good at trading and selling grain. But then came the Great Depression, a time of huge economic trouble. The pools lost a lot of money. This forced them to stop selling grain directly.
After 1935, a new government group called the Canadian Wheat Board took over grain selling in Canada. The wheat pools still ran grain elevators, which are big buildings for storing grain. After World War II, they became the main elevator operators.
However, by the 1990s, many wheat pools changed. They became private companies instead of farmer-owned co-ops. Several of them joined together. Today, all the old wheat pools are part of a big company called Viterra. This company was bought by Glencore Xstrata in 2013.
Contents
Wheat Pools: Farmers Working Together
Why Farmers Formed Wheat Pools
Farmers in the Canadian Prairies had a long history of working together. This started many years before the wheat pools. For example, the Territorial Grain Growers Association (T.G.G.A.) began in 1901. Groups that came after the T.G.G.A. helped a lot to organize the wheat pools. At the same time, the idea of co-operatives, where people work together for shared benefit, was growing in Canada.
Farmers' Worries
Farmers in the Canadian Prairies felt very unhappy with the way things were in Canada. They believed that grain companies, railways, banks, and even the government were working against them. They thought these groups were trying to take advantage of farmers.
Farmers developed a strong sense of togetherness. They felt like a team against what they saw as the "ruling elite." They especially disliked the private grain trading system. This system was centered around places like the Winnipeg Grain Exchange.
Farmers suspected that grain traders were just "middlemen." They thought these traders made money without actually helping to grow or improve the grain. Farmers were also upset about a practice called hedging. They believed this allowed traders to make money when prices fell, which hurt farmers. They also thought private traders purposely kept prices low during the fall harvest to pay farmers less.
Early Attempts to Help Farmers
Co-op Elevators
Before the wheat pools, some groups tried to set up co-operative grain elevators. Many small co-ops owned just one elevator. But two important ones were the United Grain Growers (U.G.G.) and the Saskatchewan Co-operative Elevator Company. The Saskatchewan company was supported by the government.
U.G.G. was formed in 1917. It was a merger of two smaller co-ops. One was the Alberta Farmers' Co-operative Elevator Company, backed by the Alberta government. The other was the Grain Growers Grain Company (G.G.G.C.). After this merger, U.G.G. became very powerful. It had 300 elevators and a large storage building at the Lakehead.
Even though U.G.G. and the Saskatchewan Co-op Elevators were owned by farmers, they didn't work exactly like traditional co-ops. They paid money back to people who invested in them, not always to the farmers who used their services. For some co-op supporters, this was a problem. Also, these two companies couldn't agree to merge. They also weren't involved in selling grain overseas. They weren't big enough to truly change the open market system.
