Wheat pools in Canada

During the post-war era, the wheat pools almost completely replaced the private grain companies as elevator operators.

The pools were the culmination of a long tradition of agrarian activism dating back decades in the Prairie Provinces of Canada which peaked in the 1920s.

At this time farmers in the Prairie Provinces were deeply alienated from the Canadian political and economic status quo.

[3] They also believed that private traders artificially held down prices during the fall harvest in order to shortchange producers.

The government created a series of boards in and around the war, each with progressively more power to control the grain trade.

), but by 1915 the government had seized control of all wheat exports to help the war effort, and by 1917 futures trading on the Winnipeg Exchange was banned.

Farmers were worried that after the war prices would crash and various agrarian groups lobbied Ottawa to keep the Board in place.

Farmers got a guaranteed price for that crop, paid immediately, and later a further payment once the Board had sold all harvest and made a profit.

This system of guaranteed prices and distributed income was extremely popular and when the Board dissolved in 1920, farmers were livid.