230 THEISLAND ACADIANS 
     
    
   
   
    
       
     
    
   
   
    
     Sylvére and Léo Arsenault’s dairy farm in Abram’s Village. 
     
    
   
   
    
     THE ACADIAN FARMER IN A CHANGING WORLD 
     
    
   
   
    
     Most Acadian farmers were not able to keep up with these trans- 
     
     formations. Their farms were small and poorly drained and they them- 
     
     selves lacked both the money and the education which facilitated 
     
     modernization. In addition, the Acadian youth appeared to be less 
     
     and less interested in this rather unprofitable traditional activity. Ap- 
     
     parently due to an absence of competent leaders, even agricultural 
     
     organizations, so dynamic at the beginning of the century, lost their 
     
     impetus. 
     
    

    
     Faced with this alarming situation, the Saint Thomas Aquinas 
     
     Society set up an Agriculture Committee in 1944 under the direction 
     
     of the agronomist J. Edmond Arsenault. Because of a lack of funds, 
     
     the Committee did not last long but it does have several accomplish- 
     
     ments to its credit, the most notable of which was the creation of 
     
     scholarships to send students to the Agricultural School in Sainte- 
     
     Anne-de-la-Pocatiére (Quebec). Thanks to the financial support of 
     
     the P.E.I. and Quebec governments, these scholarships enabled about 
     
     twenty farmers’ sons to take an intermediate course in agriculture 
     
     between 1945 and 1961°. One of the goals of the Committee was to 
     
     stimulate the interest of young people in agriculture. The provinciai