I move:—
Go ndeontar suim ná raghaidh thar £272,474 chun slánuithe na suime is gá chun íoctha an Mhuirir a thiocfidh chun bheith iníoctha i rith na bliana dar críoch an 31adh lá de Mhárta, 1930, chun Tuarastail agus Costaisí Oifig an Aire Talmhaíochta agus seirbhísí áirithe atá fé riara na hOifige sin, maraon le hIldeontaisí i gCabhair.
That a sum not exceeding £272,474 be granted to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1930, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of the Minister for Agriculture and of certain services administered by that office, including sundry Grants-in-Aid.
The gross Vote for the Department of Agriculture is £559,884, and the net as shown on the Estimate is £408,474. This net figure is obtained by taking the amount of the appropriations-in-aid—namely, £151,410 from the gross figure of £559,884. These appropriations-in-aid include receipts from rents, sale of agricultural produce, students' fees, repayment of loans and fees paid under various Acts, such as the Dairy Produce Act. They also include grants amounting to £58,650 from the Local Taxation Account, the Church Temporalities Fund and Estate Duties. This figure of £58,650 should be added to the net figure of £408,000 odd to get the correct figure. That would make the net total for the Department £467,124. That is the figure Deputies must take into account in order to get a correct view of expenditure. A general idea as to how this amount is spent may be obtained by grouping particular sub-heads and giving round figures which are approximately accurate. Sub-heads A, B, C and D may be grouped together under the heading of expenses of headquarters' staff. B is for travelling expenses, C for incidental expenses, and D for telegram and telephone expenses. The important sub-head is sub-head A.
The Vote under these sub-heads amounts to £124,397 and represents almost entirely the salaries and travelling expenses of the headquarters' staff. The headquarters' staff includes not only the administrative, but the general inspectorate and technical staff of the Department, with such incidental expenses as are not clearly attributable to particular headings of the Department's work. So that the cost of the headquarters' staff, which includes not only administrative staff, but the general inspectorate and technical staff, is £124,000.
Sub-heads E (1), E (2), E (3), E (4), F (2), F (3), F (4), F (5), F (6), K (2), L, M (1), M (2), M (3) may be grouped under the heading of educational services. They cost £114,329 gross and about £110,779 net. We should add to these, however, sub-head F (1), being the six Agricultural Institutes of the Department, costing £15,000 net. If you add these together you will get a total for education of approximately £125,000.
Sub-heads H (1) and H (2), amounting to £79,785, may be grouped together as grants to County Committees of Agriculture for their educational, livestock and other schemes. These sums are paid as grants into a fund called the Joint Fund, which includes not only these grants, but the amount raised by rate by the county councils for agricultural purposes. In 1928-29 the contribution from rates amounted to about £49,500. This year it will be about £47,000, as against the amount provided by the Department of £79,785. This was the amount provided by taxation.
Sub-heads G (1), Improvement of Flax Growing; G (2), Improvement of Milk Production; G (3), Improvement of Live Stock; I, Special Agricultural Schemes in Congested Districts; K (1), Agricultural Societies and Shows, and M (4), Loans for Agricultural Purposes, amounting in all to £120,113 gross, or £78,213 net, may be regarded as in respect of work done directly by the Department analogous to that administered by the Department through the County Committees of Agriculture. As will be seen from an examination of the sub-heads, this money is spent mainly on the improvement of live stock and live stock products, by giving extra premiums for bulls and boars; by leasing bulls and stock pigs; by selling bulls, pigs and horses at reduced prices for stock purposes; by paying a proportion of the expenses of the cow-testing associations, and by lending money for the purchase of stock animals and agricultural implements. The work done by the County Committees of Agriculture in connection with live stock is on similar lines.
Sub-head M (5)—Loans to Co-operative Creamery Societies. This amounts to £4,000, and is intended to meet outstanding claims in respect of loans for the building of creameries in districts in which creameries have not hitherto existed. This scheme is now wound up save for outstanding commitments, and further applications can be dealt with by the Agricultural Credit Corporation.
Sub-head M (6)—Purchase of Creameries, £35,000. This is intended to finance the purchase of additional proprietary creameries and to conclude the purchase of the Condensed Milk Company's properties, some details of which have not yet been finally cleared up. In addition to that company's creameries, thirty-six additional creameries have been purchased. The total number of creameries purchased to date is 150. If you deduct that figure of thirty-six, which is the number of creameries that do not belong to the Condensed Milk Company, you will get the number purchased from the Condensed Milk Company—that is to say, 114 creameries. Of the 150, sixty-one have been closed as redundant; forty have been transferred as operative premises to co-operative societies, and forty-nine, temporarily retained, are being worked in six groups.
Sub-heads N (1), N (2), N (3), N (4), O (1), O (2), O (3), O (4), O (5), O (6) may be grouped together under the general heading of "Control." They deal with the Diseases of Animals Acts, Horse Breeding Act, 1918, Weeds and Seeds Acts, Fertilisers and Feeding Stuffs Acts, Destructive Insects and Pests Act, Sale of Food and Drugs Act, and finally the three new Acts relating to agriculture, viz., the Agricultural Produce (Eggs) Act, the Dairy Produce Act, and the Live Stock Breeding Act. The cost of these controlled services is £50,554 gross, or about £30,354 net. Of this £30,354, the three new Acts cost £26,918 gross, or £7,918 net. The largest deficit is in connection with the Dairy Produce Act. That is to say, that the net cost of the Agricultural Produce (Eggs) Act, the Dairy Produce Act, and the Live Stock Breeding Act is, roughly speaking, £8,000. These three Acts control the production of butter, eggs and milk, and the net cost to the State of these three Acts is about £8,000. I do not think I need pay them any testimonials at this stage. I suggest that they are well worth the money when you compare that with the amount spent in other services from which you do not get anything like similar results.
Summing up the cost of these various services administered by the Department they are approximately: headquarters' staff £124,000; direct educational services £126,000; County Committee Schemes and Supplementary Schemes—that is to say, schemes that are carried out directly by the County Committees of Agriculture or analagous schemes which we ourselves carry out in connection with live stock, £158,000; buildings and purchase of creameries £39,000; control services—Veterinary Acts; Live Stock Breeding Act; Agricultural Produce (Eggs) Act; Dairy Produce Act; Weeds and Seeds Act; Destructive Insects and Pests Act, etc., £30,000, making a total of, roughly, £467,000.
These groupings are to some extent arbitrary. For instance the headquarters' staff includes not only clerical but technical officers and in the latter category are included technical officers who spent most of their time in the country. Under the heading of general and technical outdoor staff there are a number who spend most if not all of their time in the country and these alone cost about £42,000. Again it is extremely difficult to draw a clear distinction between educational and other schemes. The cost of direct educational schemes administered by the Department is set out as £126,000 and work of the County Committee of Agriculture and schemes of a similar nature, which cost approximately £158,000 is under a separate heading. These County Committee and Supplementary Schemes are, to a considerable extent, concerned with live stock and live stock products, but they are, also, to some extent, educational. They include part of the cost of instructors of the County Committees of Agriculture and the whole cost of the inspectors and overseers of the Department. The duties of these officers are not only to administer the live stock schemes but also to carry out the experimental work in connection with the cultivation of potatoes, flax and crops of all other kinds in addition to conducting manurial experiments, feeding experiments, winter agricultural class, and to act as advisers of any and every farmer in their district who wished to requisition their services.
Again the agricultural institutes are grouped as educational. These institutes are to a very large extent educational, but in addition the live stock bred on the farm attached are used to supplement the live stock schemes which are provided for under a separate sub-head. Then again it might be said that the Botanic Gardens or the contribution to the I.A.O.S. should not be grouped under the heading educational and that the services which are paid for out of these sub-heads could be more properly grouped with some other services or as separate services. This is a matter of opinion. My concern is, in the first instance, to try and analyse expenditure in a general way and under convenient and easily remembered headings.
The Department of Agriculture is staffed as follows: there are roughly 240 administrative officers, 260 technical officers, including agricultural overseers, assistant overseers, flax instructors, cow-testing instructors, and potato demonstrators, about 260 wage-earners employed in connection with the various institutes at the ports, etc., making a total of 760. In addition there are 152 officers employed by Committees of Agriculture and, also, certain temporary men employed for short periods each year in connection with the operation of Acts such as the Live Stock Breeding Act, the Weeds and Seeds Act, etc. Of the 152 County Committee officers about 29 are paid in whole by the Department and the remainder are paid partly out of a joint fund composed of about £80,000 paid out of taxation and about £40,000 paid out of rates.
Educational schemes cost approximately £126,000. Education for the farmer consists in (1) primary education, (2) technical education, (3) university agricultural education. Opinions differ as to whether agriculture should be taught in the primary schools. It is obvious that books in a rural primary school should have a rural bias, but the main point is to see that the primary school fulfills its proper function, that is, that it teaches the pupil how to read, write and calculate. If the primary school does all this it has done all that could be expected of it. Technical agricultural education is provided by the Department through its various institutions and schemes. University agricultural education is provided in the Universities of Cork and Dublin. Of the sum of £125,870 mentioned as the estimated cost of educational services £67,620 is the cost of the former or technical education and £58,250 of the latter— that is to say, of university education.
Excluding provision for University education our agricultural educational schemes consist (1) in the education of boys and girls at the Department's institutes and other colleges financed out of the Department's vote; (2) the educational and advisory work done by the instructors and overseers of the Department, of which there are about 180; (3) winter classes conducted by the Agricultural Instructors, and (4) the publication and distribution of Departmental leaflets, of which about 100 are in circulation, which are revised, added to and reissued as found necessary.
With regard to University education, as stated last year, it was estimated that £7,250 would be required for capital expenditure in connection with the Faculty of Agriculture at University College, Dublin. Of this amount £6,300 was paid to the college by the 31st March last. The cost of building the extension to the Albert College to contain the advanced laboratories with the fitting up of the laboratories, accounted for half that amount; £1,120 was spent on the plant-breeding and Animal Nutrition Department; £730 on the Plant Pathology and Zoology Laboratories, and the balance on the heating, plumbing and lighting installations at the Albert College, and on farm structures a sum of £930 is still available for capital expenditure, and it is estimated that farm structures will absorb about this amount.
The annual expenditure for Dublin came to £18,200 in 1928-29, but as certain posts in the faculty have yet to be filled it is expected that the expenditure for the current year will amount to £21,000, and this figure has accordingly been inserted in the Department's Estimates for 1929-30. The original capital grant for University College, Cork, was estimated at £67,000, but it has been found that the Dairy Institute and Creamery will cost far more than was expected, and it will be necessary to provide an extra sum of £15,000 for these buildings. These buildings could be put up at the original figure, but it was pointed out by University College, Cork, that it was only right that the building which was to be built in the College grounds should be in conformity with the architecture of the rest of the College—a point of view which I personally agreed to and the Minister for Finance agreed to. University College, Cork, is one of the finest buildings of its kind in the country, and we considered it to be false economy to ask them to put up a cement building in a very fine University like that and in the College grounds, and we have provided £15,000 extra for that to make certain that the new buildings put up in the grounds will be worthy of the architecture of the old ones. The total of the advances from the capital grant made by the Department to University College at the close of the last financial year came to £31,290. Close on £10,000 is spent on the acquisition of land and the purchase of live stock and farm equipment. Building operations accounted for the balance of the amount advanced. The capital provision in this year's Estimate is £26,000, and £10,000 of that amount has already been paid to University College to meet expenditure on the machinery and fittings for the creamery which is now nearing completion. The annual expenditure for 1928-29 came to £6,450. This fell short of the Estimate by £1,600 owing to the delay experienced in the building of the creamery and the fact that the staff estimated for were not therefore required. The sum of £10,000 has been provided in this year's Estimate to meet the annual expenses of the Dairy Science Faculty, and knowing University College, Cork, I have confidence that they will be looking for that amount.
With regard to the Live Stock Schemes, those are administered either through the County Committees of Agriculture or directly by the Department. The following figures which show the trend of our policy for the last four or five years are rather interesting. There appears in the Estimates for this year the sum of £35,100 for these schemes. I have gone through the various sub-heads showing the grants to the County Committees of Agriculture, sub-heads for special schemes for the congested districts, and sub-heads I mentioned in connection with milk production and made the following calculations; in the Estimates this year a sum of £35,100 is provided for live stock schemes as against £35,250 in 1928 and £33,590 in 1927. If I went back to 1924 or 1923 when money was far less valuable I think it could be shown that the amount provided in the Estimates this year is something like 30 or 40 per cent. more than was provided in 1924. These schemes consist in ordinary premiums issued out of the joint fund to the County Committees of Agriculture, special premiums provided by the Department and reduced and special terms given directly by the Department for bulls, boars, stallions, etc.
There is provision this year for 1,559 ordinary premiums for bulls through the County Committees of Agriculture as against 1,480 in 1928; 1,325 in 1927, 1,190 in 1926 and I should say about 700 in 1925 and about 500 in 1924. So that we have more than double the number of high class stock animals in the country and in addition there is provision for 418 special premiums as against 400 in 1928, 300 for 1927 and about 400 for 1926.
With regard to boars, there is provision for 894 ordinary premium boars for this year, as against 840 for 1928, 830 for 1927, 509 for 1926, and 480 in 1925. While I have not the figures for 1924, I believe the number is very much less than 480. There are 112 special premiums provided this year by the Department and 218 provided by the bacon curers. There will be 1,224 premium boars in the Free State this year. There is an approximate total of about 2,400 boars in the Free State, and under this scheme more than half will be premium animals, practically all large White Yorks; 80 per cent. of the balance will be by premium boars. The position with regard to pigs in this country is that practically all the pigs are large White Yorks, admittedly now the best breed. They are all practically uniform. Practically all the stock animals standing in the country are pedigree animals chosen for their configuration, substance, and so on. So far as the balance is concerned, at least 80 per cent. of the animals have three or four crosses of first-class pedigree stock. The State has done as much as it could do in that regard, and it is up to the farmers themselves to do the rest.
With regard to rams, our practice is that first-class mountain rams are placed on specially reduced terms in counties like Donegal, Kerry and Mayo, and we find that practice very successful. I think there is no doubt that there is an improvement in sheep in places like Connemara, Donegal, Mayo or Kerry, to the extent of something like 7/- or 8/- a lamb. That improvement would amount to four times what we are promised as a result of going in for an extensive policy of wheat growing. The whole scheme in connection with sheep did not cost us more than £10,000 or £15,000 a year.
In addition to these schemes, there is provision under Sub-head G (2) for £2,500 for dairy bulls, and under Sub-head (3) (d) £2,000 for stock bulls other than dairy bulls. This provision is for high-class animals costing from £800 to £1,000 each. Under this heading two years ago, very much to the disgust of certain people, we actually paid something like £1,100 or £1,200 for Scotch bulls in the Perth sales. We brought home one or two bulls, and since then the progeny of these bulls have been winning practically everything in the Dublin Shows. I am quite satisfied that, so far as the farmer is concerned, those purchases were very satisfactory, and the prizes won by the progeny of those bulls represent anything up to 200 per cent. interest on what was expended on the purchase. There are groups of small farmers or cow-testing associations, and they cannot afford to purchase a bull up to the standard. Out of these funds, under sub-head G (3), first-class bulls, equal to those bought by the best breeders, are purchased and leased to groups of small farmers or sold at reduced prices to cow-testing associations. In the case of a leased bull, the lessee pays a reasonable leasing fee based on the cost of the bull, and the animals are changed round every three years.
Finally, there is provision amounting to £2,000 to cover loss on the resale of stallions under sub-head G. 3 (a). Pedigree stallions are bought from £200 to £500 and sold from £70 to £200. Sub-head M. (4) amounts to £39,900, of which amount £15,250 is used to make advances in connection with livestock schemes; that is, to make loans especially in congested districts. We find it necessary to give also reduced prices and we have £35,000, of which £16,000 is used for that purpose. I have said already that special premium and special term animals are located mainly in the congested districts, and it is found necessary, in addition to giving a premium or selling an animal at a reduced price, to give a loan to the intending purchaser in order to enable him to pay the reduced price. In this way the livestock in a congested district are kept up to the standard of the rest of the country. The operation of these schemes consists in providing at one end the very best stock animals coupled with the operation of the licensing of bulls at the other end, and this ought to place our live stock in an unassailable position. We have the Live Stock Breeding Act, and there are inspections twice a year. These are carried out by farmers who are prominent breeders themselves and they are admittedly good judges of various types of live stock.
No stock animal can be used in this country unless he gets a licence. Our standard is high. We have been steadily rejecting about 40 to 50 per cent. of the bulls presented. Subjecting the rejected animals to castration has resulted in a tremendous advantage to live stock. If you consider that for the last five years a very large number of stock animals, amounting to nearly half the number bred, have been castrated and are not being used in the country, and that a selection of about half the animals bred in the country has been made by the Department for breeding purposes, it will be seen that these are the very best animals that we can find. If we will not license any stock animal, any bull not up to a high standard, it is clear that our standard is fairly high. That is more obvious when you learn that we have on the average rejected about 50 per cent. of the animals shown. That has been going on for the last five years. On the other hand, we have been getting the very best blood into the country. We have been paying big prices for the very best blood in Scotland, for beef and so on, and we have been paying the very best prices for dairy bulls and so on. We are getting into all the herds the very best animals we can get. Deputies should consider, in addition, that all that has cost the paltry sum of something like £30,000 or £40,000 a year. It is not a paltry sum in one sense, but it is paltry when you compare it with the cost of other services which are not nearly so remunerative even though they may be absolutely essential.
If that policy goes on for a certain time, I think we ought to aim at having this country in much the same position as Jersey and the Channel Islands, where practically every animal is pedigree. We have practically reached that position with regard to our Shorthorns. Luckily, the problem is comparatively simple. We had only three breeds of cattle, Shorthorns, Angus, and Herefords. We will leave out the Kerry breeds, which are valuable, but are confined to a certain area. The others are admittedly the three best breeds. In other countries, like England, they have about 30 breeds, and every breed has its partisan. The amount of energy that people put into politics in this country is in England put into enthusiasm over different breeds of cattle. That may be an advantage or a disadvantage, but it is a fact. The fact is that we have only three breeds, and the farmers were sensible enough to see the advantage of those breeds long before the English farmers. Twenty years ago the officers of the Department of Agriculture here were sensible enough to see that the coming breed in regard to pigs was large White Yorks, and they bought up the very best animals of that type, because they were then cheap in England and people over there were paying vast sums for other breeds which I will not name because to do so might arouse antagonism; they are breeds now at a discount. The result is that as regards pigs we have only one breed. We have really a great chance in this country if we continue the policy we are carrying out, and that is the policy of administering the Live Stock Breeding Act ruthlessly and, on the other hand, getting into the country the very best animals, and putting them at the head of our herds. We will then put our cattle, sheep and pigs in an absolutely unassailable position.
If you have good first-class live stock you will have more tillage. If you have really good beef animals it pays to feed them. If you have a good cow giving a plentiful supply of milk it pays to feed her. If you want to increase tillage in this country the way to go about it is to improve your live stock. If you improve live stock and if the farmer is making more money out of his live stock, if his animals are easily fed and are giving good results from moderate feeding, he will concentrate on feeding them, and consequently he will increase his tillage. If you want to get back to ranching pure and simple, if you want to get out of tillage, if you want to prove to the farmer that the only way he has to avoid loss is to get out of tillage, the thing to do is to neglect the live stock of the country. If you want to develop more intensive agriculture the thing to do is to develop the live stock of the country, to get better and better breeds, and to see that the animals bred at home are improving every year.
The very same thing applies to dairying. If you want to encourage the creamery industry and if you want to encourage winter dairying you must have cows with high milking yields. For that purpose you must choose your stock animals, concentrate and spend your money on livestock, on the very best bulls and on the development and encouragement of cow-testing associations. The farmer of the country who is not a fool and who knows the value of money is thinking of all these problems not as political problems, but as economic problems which he must solve or go bankrupt. If he has better stock he is getting more milk, and if his cows are better, if he sees that his cows are better and that he is keeping on improving year by year he will begin to see that it is to his advantage to get a few of his cows calving in the autumn.
When they are heavy milkers, even though they calve in the Autumn, they will milk until the summer and in that way and as a result of that the farmer will go in for more tillage. He will find it necessary to provide food for his cows during the winter. For that purpose, he will have to till more. He will have the advantage of more tillage and he will be giving more employment and more money will be put in circulation. In that way, we can get an increase in tillage. There is no question about it. Anybody who knows the conditions of the farmers in the country and anybody who looks around will see that the man who is tilling most is the man who has the best stock and he is the man who is giving most attention to his stock. He is giving more attention to his breeding animals. When we think of an agricultural policy we must base it on that farmer. We must encourage him and try and induce other farmers in the country to do exactly the same thing. The way to increase tillage is to get away from grazing, to get back to mixed farming and to spend more and more money on your livestock, sheep, cattle and pigs. When I speak of cattle I mean not only beef breeds but dairy cattle as well.
Luckily, the indications are that the policy which we have been carrying out for the last four or five years is the right one. We ought not to claim too much credit for that, because nobody can absolutely, accurately forecast the future. You can only make a guess at it and take into account all the relevant circumstances. It might very well be that it would have paid the Argentine, for reasons which lie within its own borders and some other reasons that arise out of circumstances such as those in other countries like Canada and so on, to go in more for livestock and less for the growing of wheat and maize. It might be for good and sufficient reasons Canada would have decided to go in for livestock, for butter and bacon, and less for the growing of corn. But luckily the exact opposite has happened.
It was the opinion of the Department, and my opinion as well, that we could always compete in these countries with Canada and the Argentine in live stock and in the production of live stock products. That was my opinion always, and it was the opinion of most people who thought over it, that gradually the Argentine would have to do less and less in the production of beef and that Canada would have to limit its production of beef, too, and be forced by economic circumstances to go in for the particular sort of economy that was most suitable to its own land and climate. As I say, luckily our opinion has been proved to be more or less correct. Canadian cattle are out of the market. They can send their cattle over to England again and they can go on sending them, but they cannot compete with ours. They never can compete with ours. If we continue the improvement which is already manifest in our butter trade we need not fear competition with Canadian butter. We need have no fear of competition with Canada in that direction, but we have to fear Danish competition. If we continue our improvement in live stock, we need not fear any competition from the Argentine.
There has been a shrinkage of 25 per cent. in the last two years in the imports of Argentine beef and that shrinkage is due to permanent causes. It means that the Argentine farmers, not the Parliament in the Argentine or the politicians in the Argentine, but the farmers there have come to the conclusion that beef is not paying them as well as corn. They were a long time coming to that conclusion, but they have come to it. They will be just as long changing their minds. The farmers there are, in fact, going in more and more for the production of maize and wheat and corn generally and they are leaving the trade in live stock products more and more to us. We ought to take full advantage of it. We ought to take advantage of that fully. So far as live stock products are concerned, those people are on the run and we ought to keep them on the run. We can do that by continuing the policy that we are carrying out. In that way, we can keep them on the run.
But in any case, it will not matter very much what we do because, as I have often tried to say, agriculture is very much above politics. It does not matter very much here what we do. If the State here takes up the attitude which is opposed to the general line of the farmers themselves and to the general line which the farmers themselves are taking, the State will fail. The farmers will not co-operate. And as we are all looking for votes we will all change our minds later on and we will begin to do what the farmers want us to do. The best we can do is to get the farmer to do just what he is doing a little better and to do more of it.
If the Deputies do not see the point of doing that for good economic reasons and because it is the best policy, they will be the sufferers. You will not get the farmer to change his whole economy. You will never get him to do that. He will simply be annoyed with you. It will mean that he will come to see that you do not know your own business, and that will happen no matter what his political views may be. Whether he is educated or uneducated does not matter in this connection. He and his father have been for a long time thinking of their own problems, and whilst he may not be the last thing in efficiency, nevertheless in a vague, casual sort of way he has, as the result of hard experience evolved, in general, the sort of economy on his own farm—the economy that suits his farm best, and is the sort of economy that pays best.
The business of this State is to accept that and to help him to develop that. Above all, the business of the State is to tell him: "We can do very little for you. We are spending £600,000 a year on you. We could spend £1,200,000 a year on you—just twice as much as we are spending—and it would be no importance whatever as compared with the improvement that would result from a little extra work and a little extra knowledge on the part of the farmers themselves." That is quite true—it would be no importance whatever. We have got to get on this question of agriculture— I mean we politicians have got to get on it, the inferiority complex. We ought to realise that the farmer is very much more important than we are; that what any farmer does for himself is very much more important than anything we can do for him. We should look up to him when he makes a suggestion and we should carry it out and we should not be trying to force all sorts of half-baked policies on him. We should not be trying to force on the reluctant small farmers of the country an ill-thought out unconsidered, profitless policy which will look well on paper, but which has no other merit or advantages.
