Reporting for Duty Sir

This cartoon originally appeared in the August 24, 1940 issue of Canadian Countryman. It depicts a uniformed egg labelled “100,000,000 Bushels of Canadian Wheat” reporting for duty to John Bull, the national personification of the United Kingdom. Appearing as it did in late-summer 1940, when Britain stood alone against Hitler’s armies, this cartoon represents the sense of duty with which Canadian farmers viewed their contributions to the war effort.

While exports of beef, pork, cheese, and butter would form play an extremely important role later in the war, during the early years it was recognized that tremendous quantities of wheat would be required to service the immediate food needs of an isolated Great Britain cut off from the grain fields of Europe. A large portion of Canadian war propaganda during this period was directed towards urging Canadian farmers to grow wheat, as demonstrated in this cartoon. Only a few months after it was published, the federal minister of agriculture James Gardiner told the House of Commons that “Wheat is the outstanding Canadian produce … the one material resource that is of greater importance than any other, in order that this war might be prosecuted to a successful conclusion.” Of the 500,000,000 bushels of wheat produced in Canada that season, it was estimated that one fifth of this would be needed for shipment to Great Britain.