I move:—
That the Estimate be referred back for reconsideration.
While the trade of the world is still in a fluid state and while the plans and the new ideas for the production, distribution and allocation of food and for the provision of an adequate diet for all the peoples of the world are in course of formation and not likely to crystallise for some years, it is right and proper that we should hear from the Minister what plans he has evolved for our primary industry and what opportunities he has sought and what opportunities are available in respect of the marketing of our surplus production. I listened to the Minister's rather long and monotonous speech yesterday evening and I was interested, too, in the address he gave to the Dublin Chamber of Commerce recently. I am forced to the conclusion that, so far as a policy of expanding production is concerned, the Minister has no plans, and, I am afraid, is not very concerned about our potentialities in that respect.
The Minister in his address to the Dublin Chamber of Commerce clapped himself on the back in regard to achievements in recent years and he stressed the attention given to, and the importance of, the home market. It was rather significant that, in dealing with that matter, the Minister dealt with values and not volume, because with the very steep rise in the value of food commodities, it is not so easy to assess what occurred here during the emergency. The Minister indicated that our net production had gone up, that there was a very substantial increase in output, so far as value is concerned, and a substantial increase in consumption and in the value of the home market. He indicated that we had captured that home market. In the matter of net output, we are given in the White Paper on National Income and Expenditure the value of agricultural output in terms of 1938 values. In 1938, it was £41.1 millions, and in 1943, it was £43.2 millions, while the gross output fell from £50.8 millions to £47.3 millions. I am afraid that I cannot agree with the Minister in the satisfaction he expressed regarding our progress in that respect.
It is obvious to anyone interested in this question of production from our primary industry that the big problem we have to face is stagnation, and that our achievement during the most favourable period for food production was ignominious. I do not think that is any reflection on the individual farmer. It is due to the fact that we made no attempt to organise agriculture, to organise the industry and to harness it to production. The outlook of the Minister was not satisfactory and one could not refrain from comparing his outlook, as expressed in the speeches referred to, with the outlook of the Minister for Industry and Commerce and the plans he has adumbrated and the opportunity he sees for industry. As a matter of fact, he envisages a future in which we may have an export trade in industry, but I think that Minister is overlooking one fundamental matter which is essential if we are to have that expansion, that is, that an expanding industry must come as a natural corollary to an expanding agriculture, and that, before we can achieve any expansion in industry, we must have, as a precursor, an expanding agricultural economy.
I think it is obvious from what the Minister told us yesterday and from the White Papers he has issued on some aspects of our agricultural economy that there are no plans which would lead one to hope that that expansion will materialise. The Minister completely lacks appreciation of our problems and requirements. I do not think he has the vision, the broad national outlook, necessary to achieve an expansion in agricultural production. I do not think he has shown the capacity to plan for full productive employment for all our people and full productive employment for all our people ought to be the aim.
The Minister stresses the advantages of the home market. It has been made pre-eminently clear by economists that agriculture in other countries is capable of maintaining as many as three industrial workers to one engaged in agriculture. Here we have approximately 600,000 workers engaged in agriculture and approximately the same number engaged in industry so that we have here a ratio of 50-50. Denmark has 2½ individuals employed in industry to every one engaged in agriculture and she, in fact, looks for 1½ outside the country—that is, 4 individuals who can be maintained out of the total agricultural output.
I was disappointed with the Minister in that he did not give the House any idea of our potential here or how that potential could be developed. In his very long speech he completely neglected to make any reference to our export trade and our export interests; the same is true of the White Paper which has been circulated to the House. Considering the interest that has been taken all over the world in the various food conferences which have taken place it is rather an extraordinary situation here to find our Minister for Agriculture ignoring all reference to those conferences; we had the agricultural organisation at Quebec and the more recent conference of farmers of 31 nations in London. Yet the Minister has made no reference whatever to their deliberations, or to their plans, or to the aims and objects which they were anxious to achieve. It appeared quite clearly to me that the Minister has learned very little in his long experience as Minister and that he is still a firm believer in the policy of the home market and self-sufficiency. He made it clear that was our prime aim and that we need not be too concerned about expanding production beyond its present level. I feel that if that is the policy of the Government we can have very little hope of achieving full productive employment for all our people and we shall have to continue to export a substantial number of our young men to seek employment abroad because, in the last analysis, I submit that we must export either men or goods. I think our policy should be to export goods and keep our young men at home by giving them an opportunity of earning a decent income and settling down in life.
The Minister appears to take no interest whatever in the important new issues which have arisen in regard to nutrition. New knowledge has been adduced in recent years on nutritional requirements and there is a growing appreciation of the costly burden arising from ill-health and disease due to malnutrition. I do not know what the Minister's opinions are in regard to the deliberations and the results of the conference held at Hot Springs and the other conferences which have been established to implement the recommendation of freedom from want and an adequate standard of diet and to ensure a good standard of health and a sound physical condition for all the people of the world.
It has not been made clear either by the Minister or in the White Paper whether the recommendations of the majority report or the minority report are the ones upon which the Minister will act. Are we going to have a maximum production from the land or are we going to have a restricted output? Are we going to concern ourselves merely with the production of our own requirements regardless of whether our soil, climate and circumstances are suitable to the production or those requirements; or is it to be our aim to achieve a higher level of production from the land and, at the same time, to preserve and, if possible, improve the fertility of the soil? I think that that is very important, because when one analyses the type of agricultural community we have here we realise that we have a very high percentage of small farmers. The first thing we must examine and satisfy ourselves upon is whether we are going to have economy to help the small farmer and what particular type of agriculture is best suited to his needs and his condition. Agricultural output has been divided into two categories—the calories and the protective foods. We now know as a result of estimates that calories will have to be increased by 40 per cent. and the protective foods by anything from 100 to 200 per cent. While pre-war the calories were nearly adequate for the requirements of the world, the protective foods—that is, animal and animal products which produce the proteins and the vitamins—were not nearly sufficient for requirements. As a matter of fact, a very high percentage of the people of the world did not get sufficient protective foods because such foods were not available. So far as the small farmer is concerned, the measure of his prosperity lies in the opportunities provided for him to produce protective foods. He cannot hope to compete with the big farmer in the matter of cereal production and he cannot expect that a price will be fixed for cereals which will give him a fair margin for himself and his family out of a small holding. For that reason he must fall back on the protective foods. His principal opportunity lies in the production of eggs, poultry and pigs. In anything that has been put before this House up to this I can find no evidence of any great ambition to expand production in that respect in the small farmer's interest.
I wonder has the Minister any confidence in the resolutions and aims of the conferences to which I have referred and as to the likelihood of their being implemented. We all appreciate that because we were attached for so many years to a highly industrialised country whose policy was to exchange manufactured goods for cheap food we had to sell at a very low price level with a narrow margin of profit. Does the Minister think that that position is likely to remain unchanged? Surely, the Minister ought to appreciate that in nearly every country in the world the experts, the economists, the technicians and statesmen have awakened to the fact that they should not have a position where some members of the population enjoy an income out of all proportion to the contribution they make to the national pool while the primary producer is not receiving a fair margin. Even if we look at our own particular circumstances here and examine this White Paper on national income we must realise that of the total income of this country before the war the agricultural community were enjoying only 25 per cent. of that while contributing substantially more than 50 per cent. Even now, when there is a very steep rise in the value of goods, particularly food, we receive, under what are supposed to be very favourable circumstances, only 37 per cent. of the national income.
It has been pointed out that two out of every three people in the world are engaged in agriculture or food production. The prosperity of the world and the prosperity of industry depend upon the prosperity of the primary producer and his capacity to purchase. If his prosperity is assured, then the natural corollary is a prosperous industry. Yesterday, a White Paper was circulated on crops, pastures, fertilisers and feeding stuffs. Some days before that a White Paper was issued on the reorganisation of the pig and bacon industries. It appears to me extraordinary that the Minister and his Department, having had at least six months to consider the report on agricultural policy by the post-war planning committee, should have thought it necessary to rush this House into making a decision on the recommendations contained in the White Paper in 24 hours. I do not think the system that the Minister adopted in regard to making decisions on the recommendations in the majority report and two minority reports of the Agricultural Committee, was the proper one. Some of the civil servants of his own Department that submitted the first minority report were scarcely the right people to make decisions and to select from the three reports particular items of policy that the civil servants felt were the best in our circumstances. Individuals who had submitted a minority report, naturally, were biased. They had not an open mind. They could not take a detached view of the recommendations. I do not think that those who subscribed their names to the majority report intended the committee to be composed of three officers of the Department.
