Between 1870 and 1890, Manitoba is transformed into an agrarian province.
Wheat supplants fur as the main export. The development of the railway system, especially by Canadian Pacific, means that Manitoba's agricultural products can now reach local, national, and international markets. Furthermore, the growing number of farms and the increasing population of Manitoba attract grain merchants, wholesalers, manufacturers, and financiers to the lure of profit in the rural farm market.
By the end of the 19th Century, Winnipeg and, on a more modest scale, St. Boniface, emerge as transport, distribution, and processing centres for agricultural products (seed mills, flour mills, dairies, slaughterhouses, meat packers). Increasingly, the family farm, as we know it even today, becomes in the 20th Century an ever more vital component of the huge agribusiness complex.

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