The development of a modern agricultural enterprise, beef cattle farming in Ontario, 1870-1924

grantor: University of TorontoAgriculture dominated Canadian life in late Victorian times, yet we know little about its dynamics. This dissertation describes one aspect of agriculture, beef cattle raising in Ontario, from a broad perspective in order to illustrate how farming enterprises functioned. The work does so by addressing three basic questions. What type of livestock did farmers think was suitable for the production of cattle commodities in relation to economic reality? What was that economic reality? And what shaped that economic reality? Chapter One gives the background to the situation in 1870, and assesses general concerns between 1850 and 1920. Chapter Two describes the purebred cattle industry. Chapter Three looks at the production of the ordinary farmer within the framework of breeder/feeder production systems, animal improvement, and specialization of livestock for beef and dairy purposes. Chapter Four outlines policy regulations by reviewing international quarantine problems, attitudes to bovine tuberculosis, and the development of other regulatory concerns. Chapter Five places Ontario's industry within the nation, the continent, and the international market. Chapter Six explains how the cattle industry related to the meat industry through consumption. chapter Seven reassesses patterns that emerge in earlier chapters and then outlines some international developments in the industry from 1924 to 1996. As early as 1865 beef cattle raising in Ontario was part of an international industry, which had developed by 1875 into a transatlantic system in which Canada and the United States functioned together. Regulation of the modern Canadian beef cattle industry was laid down in response to this pattern. While Canadian beef cattle raising remained centered in Ontario, not in the west, cattle bred on Ontario farms after 1890 reflected the needs of the province's dairying enterprise, not its beef cattle industry. As a result, the quality of beef cattle declined in Ontario. Because of production linkages, the Ontario situation affected how the western arm of the national industry functioned. The rise of Ontario's dairy industry, therefore, was intimately related to the decline of beef cattle everywhere in the nation. Farming for beef in Ontario from 1870 to 1924 was a complex operation with national implications, and international linkages.Ph.D