After 1878 the governments of Canada implemented policies to encourage development of grain farming in the prairie province of Manitoba and the Northwest Territories of Saskatchewan, Assiniboia and Alberta.

The agricultural community would produce cash crops for export, and would buy Canadian industrial products.

The farmers' elevators had difficulty obtaining sufficient volume for economies of scale in grain storage and handling.

[2] Farmers began to complain about the grain traders' practices, and the government established a Royal Commission to investigate the situation.

The report recommended legislation, "there being no rules laid down for the regulations of the grain trade other than those made by the railway companies and the elevator owners.

"[4] The Manitoba Grain Act was passed in 1900, a well-meaning effort to solve the problems identified by the Royal Commission.

Ostensibly the purpose was to provide an efficient method of deciding on grain prices and sending them to the managers of the local elevators, but the farmers saw the association as an anti-competitive cartel.

[4] About seventy farmers met in Indian Head, Saskatchewan in November 1901, resulting in the birth of the Territorial Grain Growers' Association (TGGA), a non-political lobby group.

[1] The delegates at the February 1902 meeting of the TGGA approved three recommendations proposed by William Richard Motherwell for changes to the Grain Act.

The act was also amended to require the CPR to cover the cost of land and sidings when anyone within forty miles of a siding applied to build a flat warehouse, and to build a loading platform when ten farmers formally applied for one.

[9] Motherwell and Peter Dayman went to Winnipeg to complain to CPR, where they were told that the railway was having difficulty adapting to the rapid growth in wheat production.

This legislation was profoundly influenced by farmers' leaders such as Edward Alexander Partridge of Sintaluta and William Richard Motherwell of Abernathy.