It would be impressive to be able to state that corn has been grown by Ontario farmers
for the entire second millennium. But the best one can say is ‘almost a thousand years’. The information available
– which is not extensive – suggests corn was first grown in what is now Ontario in about 1100-1200 AD, using seeds
traded northward from farmers in the U.S. Midwest.
One of North America’s best-recreated native villages exists at Lake Crawford, five km south of Campbellville,
Ontario (some call it one of the two best sites east of the Mississippi River) which portrays life in Ontario in
the 1300s, with corn, along with beans, squash and other foods derived by hunting and gathering being the source
of sustenance. The Lake Crawford site is a must see for anyone interested in corn production and human existence
in Ontario during pre-Columbian days. It’s not necessarily a pleasant experience, given the extent to which women
in those days (who were also, most likely, the farmers) succumbed at an early age to blindness and lung cancer
caused by continuous exposure to wood smoke in the long houses.
When the first French explorers and clergymen entered Ontario during the 1600s, they found extensive corn production,
especially in southwestern counties and in the Huronia region near Georgian Bay and Lake Simcoe. However, not a
lot of detailed written description exists of the corn-based agriculture which they encountered. The early visitors
from Europe were more interested in fur trading, or in saving souls, than in farming.
A major expansion in the Ontario population began soon after the American Revolution, in the late 1700s. Interestingly,
when these immigrants arrived in many areas of southern Ontario, they entered a land which had been largely depopulated
for a century or so because of inter-tribal warfare among native Canadians (apparently fostered in part by rivalries
between the British and French). The arrivals from the newly formed U.S. – mostly from New York state – which included
a large portion of the Iroquois nations, as well as people of European or African racial origins – would have likely
grown some corn in their newly cleared farm fields. However, the vast majority of new immigrants were from northern
Europe. They brought their own crops with them.
That meant agriculture in Ontario for at least a 100-year period – from the early 1800s into the second half of
the 1990s – was dominated by barley, rye, oats and wheat originating from Europe. When corn was grown, it was almost
always for silage – harvested in a very laborious manner which involved corn binders and hand-fed chopping boxes
at the silo. The exceptions were extreme southwestern Ontario and areas along the north shore of Lake Erie where
corn was grown for grain. Ears were hand-harvested and stored over winter in small cribs.
After nearly 200 years of relatively minor importance, corn returned to a dominant position in Ontario agriculture
beginning in about 1965. That resulted from a combination of factors including hybrid technology and earlier-maturing
hybrids for grain, chemical weed control, better mechanization for harvesting and grain drying, and a strong provincial
market for feed grains. The significance of the latter factor is often overlooked. But during the middle of the
20th century, Ontario was dependent on imports of feed grains to meet the needs of a livestock-dominated agriculture.
The terminal elevator system built on the Great Lakes in parts of southern Ontario was designed largely to bring
grains into Ontario, rather than the reverse which is more commonly the case now. The exceptions were elevators
located near Georgian Bay and Prescott, built to address pre-St. Lawrence Seaway navigation problems. Corn prices
during that era were always set on an import-replacement basis.
After the mid 1960s, corn production boomed in Ontario, generally closely linked to hog production, beef feedlots,
and poultry farming. Indeed, there was a period from the early 1970s through the mid 1980s when many farmers grew
only corn. Total corn acreage (grain plus silage) peaked in Ontario in 1981 at more than 2.8 million acres – versus
about 2.2 million acres today. Though total acreage has recently declined as farmers diversified into other crops
– especially soybeans – total provincial corn production has continued to grow, reaching an all-time high in grain
corn production of 238 million bushels in 1998. (The second largest crop will likely be about 220 million bushels
in 1999.)
A decade means little in a millennium. But the last 10 years have also been a period of dramatic change with the
focus being on both diversification and specialization in corn-growing and total farm cropping practices in Ontario.
Other changes include increased usage of corn for industrial uses, especially non-conventional uses such as automotive
fuels and other petroleum substitutes; consolidation in the businesses of farming, corn breeding, farm machinery,
grain marketing and farm-input supply; and biotechnology.
Ontario has seen a lot of change in nearly a thousand years of corn farming, with the pace of change accelerating.
We’ll talk about the next millennium in the January 2000 issue.
1