I move:—
That, in the opinion of the Seanad, further steps require to be taken to encourage an increased production of wheat; in particular, the House recommends that the minimum price of 50/- per barrel for millable wheat, which has been guaranteed for the coming season, be assured to wheat growers over a period of years.
This motion has been put down by Senator Crosbie, Senator McGee, and myself. Unfortunately I heard from Senator Baxter too late to add his name to the movers of the motion. Thus, it has the support of four persons with an interest in agriculture. As I have said, it has been in the hands of the Clerk for practically a month. We postponed the motion so that in no circumstances would we give the impression that we were trying to interfere with the national effort or to upset the farming community during this particular time of sowing. The main object of the motion is to second the representations which have been made in the Dáil to the Government from both sides of the House in connection with the want of energy which they have displayed in this very grave emergency, and to ensure a measure of security for farmers who have been doing for years past, and are doing this year, their utmost to provide the essential food for our people. It seems to me almost incredible that the machinery of a modern Government in an agricultural country like this, which has hitherto been practically untouched by the war, and whose main competitors have been practically eliminated, has not been able to save the country from being short of essential foodstuffs.
What is the position? We are short of bread for the people. We have a very nebulous idea as to the amount of cereals we will get next year. In a reply to a question addressed to the Minister in the Dáil, asking him whether he could state approximately the acreage of wheat, oats and barley which had been set in the country up to date, the Minister said that he was quite unable to do so. So we really do not know where we are. We know that our poultry industry has dwindled almost by some 2,000,000 head, and our pig production will soon be a thing of the past. For the time being we have saved our brewery trade by a deal with a country whose people require our products and who are fighting a hard battle for themselves and, incidentally for us. With a firm policy at the outset of the war two and a half years ago, putting aside political considerations, with a little study of past history and proper organisation of our country's main resources, we would have made ourselves not only absolutely self-sufficient but would have had a surplus to export and with which to make money. Elsewhere, I have seen a good deal of personal abuse of the Minister and I deprecate it. Clever, offensive verbiage may be all right for the crossroads, but it cuts no ice in "higher" debate. In this matter the Minister himself is not entirely to blame; this unfortunate position is the collective responsibility of the Government and of the Taoiseach, in particular, as its Head. One and all, they must have been aware of the decline of our economy and collectively they should have taken adequate and drastic steps to settle it. The Minister is not quite without blame; he must bear his own part of it and that a very considerable part. He is the man most able to tell his colleagues the real situation, to warn them of a worsening outlook, to recommend appropriate remedies and to resign if his advice was not accepted. When we were last discussing this matter in the House, he hurriedly left us to tell the country that there was to be no increase in the price of wheat; only a few days before the price which we were then asking for was granted. I do not wish to be offensive, but I must say that his attitude in regard to this crisis, when he could have shown himself to be a master man, the biggest man in the country is very difficult to understand and certainly does not make for confidence.
Figures are rather apt to weary people, but I must give the House two simple statistics. The first is that we require 2,700,000 sacks of flour to feed our people and, now that we are milling 100 per cent., it means that number of barrels of wheat. The second is that in the year 1929, when we were feeding and exporting at a very high figure, we produced 1,800,000 cwts. of offals and we imported 470,000. We mixed that with maize and fed pigs, poultry and cattle, to produce bacon, eggs, milk and butter. Now, we should be growing barley and wheat in equal quantity to make that good, but as it is we have nothing at all in the shape of wheat offals and no steps whatever are being taken to produce them. There is very little wonder that we stand as we do, and that pigs, eggs, poultry and butter, instead of being lucrative export commodities, will very soon be things of the past, even in our own dietary. The situation has been accentuated a good deal by the fact that no steps have been taken to provide an alternative to maize.
I must say I find it extremely hard to blame those farmers who have fed wheat to their animals. It is in the present situation rather like jailing a woman for stealing to feed her starving child for whom the State has made no provision. The position which gave cause for these prosecutions should never have been allowed to arise. The full responsibility for the want of essential animal and human food and the decline of our export trade rests not on the Minister individually but on the Government as a whole, whose business it is to see that people and animals are cared for. The obvious course would have been in the beginning — though I know it is easy to be wise after the event — to put under cereals a sufficient acreage to meet all requirements without considering recourse to imports. Instead, we have had a half-hearted policy of voluntary tillage, of advertisements to the country—"Feed the people"; "Grow more wheat", and so on — and that policy has not been vigorously enforced. The result is that, so far as supplies of food are concerned, we are going steadily from bad to worse. Exemptions seem to be far too wide in their application. The estimates made by inspectors of what is arable land or not err, particularly in the grass lands, very much on the side of leniency.
I am aware of cases where after inspections have been undertaken action has been postponed until it has been too late to do any sowing for this season or no action has been taken at all. No doubt there would be difficulties in taking this course which I am now going to propose to the Minister in a constructive manner. I think that the difficulties, if they cannot all be overcome in toto, can be overcome in very great part. What I suggest to him now in general terms is that when he leaves this House he goes to his officials and says: “I want your proposals with a view to ensuring sufficient food to feed the whole of this country in the 1943 season. I also want wheat offals, and oats to equal production and imports in 1929, and a barley programme to make good the maize which we used in the same year. I want you to work generally on these lines. You can envisage compulsory tillage up to your requirements to achieve the object in view, on all the 218,000 holdings in the country which are over £7 valuation, and you can give a bonus to all smaller holdings which contract to grow wheat and vegetables.
"First of all, I want you to work out the quota which must be allotted to each, in order to ensure a sufficiency of bread, and then add what is necessary to find the bran and pollard we require. Then I would like you to go on to the oats, because the straw from the oats will, in very good part, make up for the hay which is lost after the first year of compulsory tillage and, what is more, will make up to a certain extent for the want of essentials in the country, owing to the fact that there will be more manure made through the tying up of animals in the winter. Finally, I want you to tell me where and how to get the barley I require. You naturally have to make considerable exemptions per bag for unsuitable land, but the existing easements on the good land must be tightened up to provide machinery and seed on loan, where it is really necessary.
"Get out a scheme for a tillage committee in each county to carry out definite regulations with the assistance of the Gárdaí and L.S.F., and make those regulations as simple as you possibly can." I think you should have somebody up here to whom the various county committees could apply to in difficulty, somebody who could give them an immediate answer and let them get on with the job. I would say: "I want you to draft an order for the Government to stop all further emigration of agricultural workers, and, finally, I want you to give me an estimate of what subsidies will be required to get this scheme into being. These proposals you must give me by the 15th June, and then, when I have looked them over, I propose to discuss them with a Committee of both Houses, before I put them into shape for the Government to sanction. I do want you officials to bear in mind that a full provision of cereals with a margin to cover a bad season or additional requirements, is the first consideration for this country, and the second is the restablishment of our export trade even if we have got to give subsidies in very large measure. But, before that, the stuff must be there and it has got to be brought up to the highest possible point."
This proposal sounds a rather lengthy one, but it is in general terms. It does imply that somebody grasps the nettle — and that quickly and firmly. So far as the food situation is concerned the nettle requires to be grasped very quickly and very firmly indeed. That is the proposal I have to make. As regards the second part of the amendment, it is going from the general to what I call the particular. If the Minister accepts my proposal and goes into it with his officials, there is very little need to say anything more. If, on the other hand, he thinks the present situation is satisfactory, then we must press for the recognition of the effort which is being made by the majority of the farmers to meet the present emergency, an effort which would want to be continued, and ask that wheat growers be assured of a guaranteed price for so long as hostilities continue and for not less than three years thereafter. This further period is to allow for readjustments in the event of post-war conditions calling for a change of economy.
I have been prompted to put forward this proposal by the fact that the Minister appears to realise the importance of giving a guarantee of this nature, in so far as he told Senator Crosbie at a public meeting in Cork City that he was prepared to consider the matter. As a matter of fact, we are asking no more than the security of the capital invested in what amounts to a new undertaking on a large scale, and only on terms similar to those which have been accorded broadcast to a very large number of industrial concerns which have been born, and have lived, and have died — some of them, not all of them — in this country during the last few years, and which the agricultural community have paid for in toto. If the Government, on the other hand, are not disposed to give us this guarantee the implication is very clear, and that is that if hostilities were to cease and as soon as cheap wheat can be imported, as well as cheap maize, the farmer with increased tillage could be left high and dry with a large extent of uneconomic tillage and without the means, in the shape of money, to readjust his economy. However, there is very ample precedent for the necessity of this guarantee when we recollect the effect of the repeal of the Corn Production Act in 1919 after the last war. The result was that many thousands of farmers were ruined — stuck in the banks for years afterwards — and quantities of good arable land, which could have gone back to grass, instead of being sown down was “tumbled down” to very poor pasture indeed.
I have one word more to say for this motion. We have advisedly used the word "minimum" as regards 50/- per barrel. I say definitely that we are satisfied with it, at the present time, but we naturally reserve the right to press for an increase in price in proportion to the amount by which farm costings and the cost of living of the farmer may increase in the coming years.