Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x5gtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-30T13:44:26.493Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Marketable Surpluses in Ontario Farming, 1860

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Marvin McInnis
Marvin McInnis*
Affiliation:
Queen’s University, Ontario, Canada
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

It is now commonplace to acknowledge that self-sufficiency never really existed in North American farming. From the earliest years of settlement farmers had some degree of orientation to the market. Even on the frontiers of most recent settlement, farms generally could not be characterized as being of a wholly subsistence nature. Nor was there some mystic moment when agriculture shifted from self-sufficiency to commercialization. The real issue is the extent of commercialization at any time and place. One way of examining that is to determine the extent to which specialization and resort to the market was feasible, through assessing the magnitude of marketable surpluses. How much did farms typically produce over and above the consumption needs of their own households, and how did that vary according to circumstances?

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Science History , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , Fall 1984 , pp. 395 - 424
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1984 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

fn00

Author’s Note: Someshwar Rao provided much appreciated assistance in the original assembly of the Canada West Farm Sample. James Nugent contributed valuably to the organization and handling of computer files of the data. Much of the analysis for the present article was done with the assistance of Heather Tremble. The financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada is gratefully acknowledged.

References

Bateman, F. and Faust, J. D. (1974) “A sample of rural households selected from the 1860 manuscript censuses.” Agricultural History 48 (January): 75–93.Google Scholar
Bennett, M. K. and Pierce, R. H. (1961) “Change in American national diet, 1879-1959.” Food Research Institute Studies 2 (May): 95–119.Google Scholar
Fowke, V. C. (1962) “The myth of the self-sufficient Canadian farmer.” Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada 56 (series 3, section 2): 23–37.Google Scholar
Jones, R. L. (1946) History of Ontario Agriculture, 1613-1880. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Lewis, F. and McInnis, M. (1984) “Agricultural output and efficiency in Lower Canada, 1851.” Research in Econ. History 9.Google Scholar
Lewis, F. and McInnis, M. (1980) “The efficiency of the French-Canadian farmer in the nineteenth century.” J. of Econ. History 40 (September): 497–514.Google Scholar
McInnis, R. M. (1984) “The Canada West farm sample, 1861.” Queen’s University (unpublished).Google Scholar
McInnis, R. M. (1977) “Childbearing and land availability: some evidence from individual household records,” in Lee, R. D. (ed.) Population Patterns in the Past. New York: Academic. SAS Institute, Inc.Google Scholar
McInnis, R. M. (1982) SAS Users’ Guide: Statistics. Cary, NC: Author.Google Scholar
Williams, F. M. and Lockwood, J. E. (1930) An Economic Study of Food Consumed by Farm and Village Families in Central New York. Bull. 502. Ithaca: New York Agricultural Experiment Station.Google Scholar
Woodbury, R. M. (1944) “Economic consumption scales and their uses.” J. of the Amer. Stat. Assn. 39: 455–468.Google Scholar