Legislative Assembly

is occupied by the City of Charlottetown and Summerside, and the little Towns, Souris, and the Villages, and the Parks, and the Railways, and the Roads that they are Widening out every year, and the little parks that are going up, and the house- hold areas that are extending out into the country every year, going out from the town, and the stores. How many acres of land are taken up with these? Did they work that out, have they deducted that from the total acreage in this Province that is fit for agriculture? If they wanted 400,000 acres of land for agriculture they would have to go out somewhere in the Strait of Northumberland to get it.

These are some of the things that I am interested in and would like to discuss with these men, because I know that they were given advice before they went up to Black Banks. They practically told those that gave them advice they didn’t know what they were talking about. That is the amount of agricultural know-how they have insofar as these lands are concerned. I am wondering too, if they clean out the woodlands of Prince Edward Island what will happen? It is only 100,000 acres in grassland clear of the cultivated land. That means they have to get 300,000 more acres that they have to clear the woods off. What would happen to this Prov- ince? We would be a sand-bank before too long, as a matter of fact there have been too many trees cut now from the highways away from the side of the roads. There are too many trees being taken out of the fields, the cross fences and the hedgerows, which creates a very serious situation insofar as water supply is con- cerned. They tell us we have lots of water. Ask any farmer in the country whether we have, ask those who are sinking new pumps, take a look at the little streams in Prince Edward Island. This is not guesswork, we all know this; they are drying out. If you clear off 300,000 acres of woodland on Prince Edward Island I will tell you this: it would be one of the most serious developments that could possibly be imagined. And then they tell us that we are capable of producing three times the present production. Well in that case we would have to be growing 400,000 head of cattle, 400,000 hogs, 160,000 acres of potatoes. I don’t know how much grain. We could not get all the acres in here, nor could we feed the cows, or the hogs either. They say we will grow grain on Prince Edward Island, not only to take care of our own requirements but the requirements in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick as well. We should have a look, Mr. Speaker, at the amount of grain and feeds that are coming in to the Maritime Provinces from Western Canada. I don’t know what we would do without them. Then they state that we have 130,000 head of hogs for market in the Maritimes in this Province, now being supplied by the United States. Well don’t you think that if the United States is supplying us now we would be in competition with them, with that 130,000. American pork is coming right in here to Charlottetown. Maine potatoes are coming into Prince Edward Island. You have no preserve at all such that you can say this is my market here. Quebec cheese is going into Newfoundland. Nova Scotia is producing their own cheese —— over one-quarter million pounds this year. All these things must be taken into consid— eration, and it is not, to my mind, the question of additional land for growing pro- duce. That is not the problem at all. The problem is the price the farmer is going to get for the product which he raises. Why ask him to take on one hundred acres more land and raise more bushels of potatoes when he. can't sell the quantity of potatoes that is coming off the farm he has now? That is not thinking right and my honourable friend from Belfast, from Pownal knows that that is right. Market- ing is the big problem that the farmer has to face, and if the farmer can get a price for the hogs or his cattle or his potatoes that pays him a profit you need not worry about the extension of production land. He will look after it, but if he IS not getting that, if he is producing at less than cost of production we will be up against exactly the same problem in this Province that exists at this moment. People are leaving the farms whether small, medium~sized or large. The President of the Federation of Agriculture a few days ago said this, “It is not the small farm we should be trying to phase out, because the small farm is doing just as good a Job as the large one.”

Under our policy of industrial expansion, we hoped to get industries in here such as at New Annan, that it would be a God-send for the small farmer producing new crops, and the same would be true of Georgetown, and it is true_of Montague, and it is true of this one out here, in Sherwood. If we had the industries that would pick up the products of the small farm you don’t have to have a large farm in order to survive, and survive in reasonable comfort and happiness.

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