This Bookcase series parallels the First Agricultural Ministry Series. It consists of near-print material: reports, brochures, business plans, proposals, commentary on government policy, position papers, annual reports of independent agencies heavily involved with agriculture, municipal- and provincial-level interventions re: federal policies, and the like.
The documents were produced by a variety of originators: chambers of commerce, universities, interest groups, advocacy groups, consultants, individuals prominent in the field of agriculture and other fields of endeavour, research specialists, various (non-federal) government agencies (especially at the provincial and municipal levels), international agencies and the like.
Efforts were made, as this series was processed, to remove all the usual and regular federal-government publications, such as annual reports of the various departments, which are common and easily obtainable from the National Library and from the RG3 record group in Federal Archives, and minutes of standing committees. Some, however, slipped through.
Virtually all the files bear on agricultural issues, such as: agricultural prices and marketing boards, their issues and practices; farm supports in place for farmers in difficulty; transportation and distribution of farm goods; amelioration of farming practices; the international farming scene and global food production, distribution and trade issues; farming difficulties and challenges; and so on. There are certain files - such as the Canadian Airline Pilots' Association report on bilingualism in air traffic control, metric conversion, Royal Ontario Museum redevelopment and the like - which seemingly have no bearing on the Agricultural portfolio, bur were hot issues of the day, and thus have been retained.
Whelan's office seemingly cross-linked these files to the files in his Agricultural Ministry Series I through the use of a "B" (i.e. Bookcase) number on each file. This is only a guess, however, and the actual enumeration methodology is not quite clear. However, in content it seems to parallel the file types of the Agricultural Ministry Series.
The files were preserved with the fonds because of their rarity (most are from agencies or individuals whose papers will not likely be retained elsewhere), because they were important enough for the Minister's office to retain, because they constitute a record of the outside resource material which the office felt would be used, and because of their unquestionable research value for researchers working on agricultural / agricultural departmental issues.
