I do not want to enter into a debate on the merits and demerits of fruit growing, nor of the special advantages and disadvantages that we possess for growing certain types of fruit. All I say is that obviously we are importing something like a quarter of a million pounds worth of fruit between apples and strawberries. Where does that leave us? Suppose we produce all that in this country? What is it as compared with the slightest increase in butter or eggs or bacon? Not the slightest weight. Here is the line we are on—the reason the farmer goes in for butter and eggs is because it pays him better. The conditions are widespread and consistent. That has not been contradicted. The lesson that you ought to draw from the facts of the case has not, to my mind, been contradicted by any set of costings produced by any authorities.
What I say is this: you can do anything you like to encourage the production of £250,000 worth of fruit, apples and strawberries, and you can do what you like in the stimulation of these products, but an increase in the production of your butter would mean, even taking it at the very smallest, £250,000. A fairly small increase would amount to £500,000 annually, and a reasonable increase would amount to £1,000,000. The same applies to eggs. One year with another, cattle production and the export of cattle fluctuates between two and three million pounds and all the wealth you can get out of strawberries and apples and the growing of fruit would be swallowed up by the slightest fluctuation in cattle. A fluctuation in cattle may mean, in rise or in fall, a matter of two or three millions. But these are all details. This matter of fruit is only a detail, and perhaps we can see where we can encourage it. But it is very little use in a big way, and neither for the moment is the matter of £30,000 worth of suet for bovril or any of those other items picked out of the statistics of the things which we are importing.
None of these things is going to be any substitute for butter, bacon, eggs, beef and mutton. We have a bag that will hold £35,000,000. If you can get any substitute for these that would be suitable to the farmer, surely the thing to do would be to develop it. If these things are suitable to the farmer, and if the farmer finds that they pay, the thing to do is to develop them. In all these matters, we are self-supporting, and more than self-supporting. Let us give up all this talk and criticism about producing for export. There has been one suggestion, and only one suggestion, put up. I am not taking tobacco seriously. I refer to the suggestion put up about wheat. To my mind, if the State has money to spare, it could much better utilise that money than by giving a subsidy to wheat. If the State decided on a policy of subsidy, the money would be much better spent in bringing about a state of affairs where, perhaps, we would go in more for winter dairying. Through winter dairying we can get an increase in tillage more than in any other way. But we would have enough to do at the moment if we would only concentrate on the things that are obviously suitable and right and develop them for all they are worth. We will get something if we go on these lines.
We hear a good deal about cattle, sheep, bacon, butter, eggs and poultry. Quidnuncs come along, and in any year that the prices of these fall they say: "I told you so; this is the worst of making this country a vegetable garden. This is the worst of this policy of grazing and grazierdom." Now that is all dope. I could not guarantee a market for the farmers or for anyone. No Department of State could do it. A Department of State can only co-operate in helping the farmer. We cannot change any detail for a very long time. We could persuade the farmers, in the course of a number of years, to change the details of their farming, but we cannot change them ourselves. We could perhaps do it in ten years. If there was a big market here, we could possibly do a lot of things. Meanwhile, it is good business, in times like this, to concentrate on big items and to concentrate on the particular form of production which is most susceptible of improvement, and the expansion of which will certainly yield good results.
Deputy Corry made a speech on these Estimates, but he missed the main point. I agree with a lot of what Deputy Gorry said. He suggested to me that I ought to give up politics and stick to farming, that that is what I was paid for. There is the trouble. He was very nearly right, but not in that suggestion. The Deputy was very nearly right, but he was very much wrong at the same time, and for this reason— what he meant really was that politics are of no importance. Of course they are not, and if this were a normal Parliament there would be no such discussions as we have here. What the Deputy really meant to say was that politics have sterilised this country; that the creative sterilised all the creative energy in this country; that the creative energy in the country has been canalised for the last hundred years, and particularly for the last five years, into politics, with the result that we have become sterile. We produce nothing. That is really the position with the Opposition Deputies. The real point against the Deputies opposite is that they are continuing that particular process under which all the creative energy of this country is going into politics; is going into things that do not matter twopence instead of going into life, and when I speak of life I mean agriculture, medicine, law, arts and literature.
