The End of Agrarianism

THIS PAPER DEALS with an attempt by the farmers of Alberta and Saskatchewan to have the economy regulated to their advantage. Through parity, the farmers hoped to have the prices of the goods they bought controlled by the values of those they had to sell. The agitation in favour of parity prices lasted ten years, and it culminated in a massive 30-day farm strike in autumn 1946. At the heart of the whole matter was the issue of agrarian survival. The struggle for parity involved marginal farmers who worked small acreages and had large overheads. These producers were being impoverished by their inability to compete with their more mechanized counterparts. The ultimate failure of their protest marked the end of the non-competitive farmers' existence in agriculture. But despite its failure, the agitation reveals not only the similarities between the industrialization process in its urban and rural contexts, but also the difficulties involved in transferring forms of dissent from one sector to the other. CET ARTICLE ETUDIE LES EFFORTS des fermiers de l'Alberta et de la Saskatchewan afin de jouir d'une economie reglementee a leur avantage. Grâce au systeme de parite, ils esperaient voir les prix des biens qu'ils achetaient controle par ceux des produits qu'ils vendaient. La campagne en faveur de la parite des prix dura dix ans pour culminer, a l'automne 1946, en une greve massive des fermiers. La lutte pour la parite impliqua les fermiers etablis sur des operations marginales, a faible superficie, el dont les frais d'operation etaient proportionnellement eleves. Ces producteurs etaient appauvris par leur impuissance a soutenir la competition des fermes fortement mecanisees. L'echec Final de leur protestation signale la fin de l'existence non-competitive des fermiers dans le domaine agricole. Mais malgre son echec, cette agitation revele non seulement les similarites entre le processus d'industrialisation en milieu urbain et rural, mais aussi les difficultes eprouvee dans le transfert de certaines formes de dissidence d'un secteur a un autre

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• Working People in Alberta

  Open Access•Jim Selby, Eric Strikwerda et al.•Working people in Alberta•2012

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