On the adjournment, Deputy Cogan has given notice to raise the subject matter of Question 15 on to-day's Order Paper.
Committee on Finance. - The Adjournment—Agricultural Costings.
To-day I asked the Minister for Agriculture:—
"If he can state what steps have been taken to set up an agricultural costings section in his Department and also what progress has been made in the investigation of farmers' costings."
The Minister replied:—
"The question of the most suitable costings system to be adopted for the purpose in this country is at present under consideration, and until this has been settled the investigation of farmers' costings cannot be commenced."
I asked him further if he could state definitely "that a costings section would be set up" and the Minister in reply to my supplementary question said: "The answer is no; I cannot." I think that, from every aspect, that was a highly unsatisfactory reply. During the 10 years that I have been a member of the House I have consistently advocated that the agricultural producer is entitled to a price for his produce that will enable him to meet his costs of production and leave him a small margin of profit. Now, you cannot be certain that a farmer is getting a fair price for his produce unless you take efficient steps to find out what are a farmer's production costs. In the case of manufacturing industry, manufacturers are called upon from time to time to produce their costings figures, which are then checked and rechecked.
A farmer is frequently asked to produce his costings figures, and every time they are put up either by farmers' associations or by the representatives of farmers they are always disputed. We are always told that they are exaggerated. What we want now, and what I have been asking for in this House, is an official figure of farmers' costings, the figures to be ascertained by a responsible authority.
For years I have suggested that it would be better if this investigation into farmers' costings were undertaken not by the Department of Agriculture but by an independent tribunal set up under legislation. The views which I frequently expressed in this House on that were endorsed by Deputy Corry, and last year the then Minister for Agriculture, Deputy Smith, gave an undertaking to the House that he would introduce legislation setting up an independent costings tribunal. He gave that undertaking solemnly to the House, but three months afterwards he came back and told us that he had changed his mind. Why did he change his mind? I know why he changed his mind—because, having consulted with those in the Department of Agriculture, he realised that if he were to publish official costings figures for agriculture, they would prove that the farmer's income was so low that it was physically impossible for him to pay even the statutory wage fixed by the wages board. Thus the Minister was apparently compelled by his Department to change his mind. He informed us at that time that, instead of setting up an independent tribunal, he would set up a costings section in his Department and we had to be satisfied with that.
Now, a lot of things have happened since that undertaking was given. There has been a "new look" in the national affairs of this country. We have got a new Minister for Agriculture and he has told us that he cannot give us an undertaking that he will set up this costings section in his Department. When he says that he cannot give that undertaking I assume that he does not really wish to do so. If we were dealing with a Minister of the usual mediocre type we would accept the fact that he had been beaten or overcome by the difficulties to be surmounted in setting up this costings section, but we are dealing with a brilliant Minister, a man of outstanding ability, a man who, in the last couple of weeks has doubled the output of eggs and is to double the output of grass. We do not expect that he can work miracles, but we do expect him to surmount the ordinary administrative difficulties that lie in the way of setting up a costings section in his Department. This is a very moderate demand.
The Minister thinks it is impossible, by investigation, to find out reliable figures for every class of farmer as to what it costs him to raise pigs, cattle and other stock in the varying circumstances that prevail throughout the length and breadth of the country on varying sizes of farms with their various degrees of fertility, but I suggest that there is an easy way out for the Minister. Deputy O'Reilly and myself have a motion before this House which provides for the setting up of demonstration farms to be operated by the Department. If these demonstration farms are set up by the Department in the various districts through the country—farms of varying size on which there are varying degrees of fertility in the soil—then we will be able to get figures produced by the Department itself which no farmer can question. Where is the difficulty in adopting that course? All the advantages lie with the Department. They have the scientific knowledge that is not possessed by the ordinary farmer. They can recruit from the agricultural colleges the best brains in this country to run those demonstration farms.
Year after year I have had the pleasure of meeting many young men who have taken their degrees in agriculture in the universities, and I have been astonished and impressed by their ability and by the high standard of their scientific and practical knowledge. These are the men who could take charge of those demonstration farms throughout the country, and who could prove whether or not agriculture is a paying proposition. We know that there is no industry in the whole sphere of economic operations about which there is more misrepresentation, more misunderstanding and more ignorance than in regard to agriculture. There are people in this country who believe that farmers are always infinitely better off than they pretend to be. We have official figures produced by the Government on national income. How is it that our officials can provide figures relating to our national income? How are they able to estimate the output of agriculture and the amount of butter, eggs, etc., consumed on the farm? They are able to give figures for all these things. They are able to estimate the national income and their estimate has not been seriously questioned.
In the White Paper on national income published some years ago, it was estimated that the total national income of this country for the socalled normal year, 1938, was £154,000,000. The income for that year of those engaged in agriculture was 25 per cent. of that amount—£39,000,000. The remainder of the population divided between them £115,000,000. We know that there are almost exactly the same number of people engaged in agriculture as are engaged in other occupations and we find that the income of people engaged in agriculture in 1938 averaged £60 each per year while the average income of the rest of the population was £177 per year. Thus we have a position in which people outside agriculture are admitted, even by the statistical experts of the Government, to have an income in the last normal year, four times as great as that of the average person engaged in agriculture.
Is it any wonder, then, that we have this persistent flight from the land, this persistent reduction in the number of people engaged in trying to live on the land? Is it any wonder that we have people of ambition and ability trying to get away from agriculture? We want to end that state of affairs. We want to raise the income of people engaged in agriculture at least to the income of persons engaged in other occupations. That is the objective we have got to set before ourselves. Can we seriously claim that we are making a real attempt to secure that ideal if we allow ourselves to be intimidated by the difficulties that might arise in trying to ascertain what the farmer actually earns? In the past couple of days we have had a controversy between Deputy O'Reilly and the Minister in regard to the cost of producing pigs. We shall always have these arguments between Ministers and farmers, and between farmers, consumers and other sections of the community until we get down to a reliable official figure that will be accepted. I am prepared to accept an expert's figure discovered by having a fair system of demonstration farms of various sizes throughout the country run by the best brains of the Department of Agriculture. We might be inclined to say that that would be unfair to the farmers because, after all, some farms are run by aged people, people who are in infirm health, and very often by widows. You have not always active young men in charge of farms. We are, however, prepared to concede all that to the Department and to accept the figure they discover. Remember, the advantage of discovering accurately farm costings is that we shall have as well a basis upon which we can ensure that the farmer is given a fair profit. I am not in favour of very high prices for agriculture. What we ask for is that the farmer shall have a certain margin of profit over and above his costings. If you find that the farmer has not got that margin of profit, you have either to authorise an increase in prices or reduce his cost of production. You can do it in whatever way is feasible at a particular time but you must give the producer a certain margin upon which to live.
Another advantage of having a fair, accurate and reliable system of costings would be that it would make for efficiency. The figures would establish what are the costs of production in the various branches of farming—what is the cost under the most efficient methods of producing pigs, wheat, oats, barley or any other crop or the cost of production in any other branch of agriculture. Farmers would have a chance of studying these figures and of obtaining enlightenment. An ounce of practice is worth a ton of precept and if the Department's officers can demonstrate on a farm more efficient methods than the farmers are actually using, the farmers will gladly and cheerfully accept and imitate these methods. I think the Minister should not allow himself to be intimidated by any administrative difficulties which he may foresee in arranging for these costings. He is a man of initiative and I appeal to him not to turn down the suggestion which I have made in this question.
I should like to intervene——
I doubt if the Deputy can intervene.
Oh, he can.
He must give the Minister sufficient time to reply.
I should not like to take up any of the time which the Minister may require to reply. I just merely want to say that for years there has been a persistent demand by the working farmers of the country for demonstration farms to ascertain costs of production. The need for that was amply demonstrated to-day when I put a question to the Minister with the object of ascertaining if his Department had any figures as to the cost of producing pigs. The Minister had to say that there was no such figure but that, in his opinion, if farmers produced the bulk of the food necessary to produce pigs on their farms, he believed the present price of pigs would be sufficient. I put a supplementary question then as to whether the Pigs and Bacon Commission accepted the statement that it would take 22 cwts. of potatoes to produce a 1 cwt. of pork and if, at present prices, the Minister still contended that the price the farmer was getting covered the cost of production.
For some cause of which I was unaware, when I was about to put a further question, the Ceann Comhairle directed the next question to be answered. I am very far from making any reflection on the impartiality of the Chair. Probably, owing to my inexperience, I transgressed the procedure governing Parliamentary questions without knowing it. However, I wished to ask a further question, as to whether taking a balanced ration of food produced on the farm—and in my opinion it would cost something over £10 to grow the food necessary to produce 1 cwt. of pork, without taking into consideration fire, labour and the risk of loss—the Minister still maintained in face of that that the farmer was getting his cost of production. After all, the facts prove that the farmer has not been getting the cost of production. As a result pig production has been declining. As things are at the moment, and judging by the prospects before us, I fear pig production will still further decline. Until we get this committee on costings and farm prices, I see no hope of appealing to the farming community to increase production by any means. After all an ounce of work is better than a ton of talk and until we get down to facts and set up this committee on costings —if necessary we can have representatives of the consumers as well as representatives of labour along with representatives of farmers—I would say that there is not much hope of inducing the farming community to go in for that increased agricultural production which we all claim is so necessary for the advancement of the people.
I find myself, in principle, in entire agreement with Deputy Cogan. If I could evolve a satisfactory system of establishing a costings branch in my Department, I would do it to-morrow, and, since I took over the Department, we have been in correspondnce with some of the institutes in Great Britain which have been carrying on a system of farm costings for the past 30 years, with a view to inquiring whether any of the methods they have employed could have been adapted to our circumstances here. We have been considering in the Department the choosing of certain members of the staff and their despatch to institutes in Great Britain and the United States of America to study the methods in use there. But the difficulty I have had in making up my mind about the desirability of establishing a costings branch is that, while it would be quite easy to make the magnificent gesture of sending members of the staff off to Wye College in England, to Oxford or Cambridge, or to Wisconsin or some of the other institutes in the United States, I do not feel justified in doing so, until I am satisfied in my own mind that, when these men came back with all there was to learn of the statistical methods at present in operation in these places, their training could be effectively applied to our conditions to elicit the information we really want.
As I understand Deputy O'Reilly and Deputy Cogan, their desire is to be in a position to ascertain, for instance, what the cost of producing pork per cwt. is, so that a price could be fixed for pork which would give the average farmer a modest return for his labour. What are the practical difficulties? In Great Britain and America, their real success in costings has been with large farms which ordinarily keep elaborate systems of accounts for their own income-tax purposes. Therefore, the people who went out to collect statistics found that they could go into the farmer's office and get a complete set of books which provided them with a very comprehensive set of accounts, and, when they had collected 50 or 60 such sets, they had a very reliable picture of what the costings on that type of farm were. But these would be men of anything from 200 to 1,000 acres. Even in England, where all the small farmers were tenants of landlords who maintained a kind of general control over the farming policy he allowed on his estate, they found that, when it came to going around from house to house trying to collect statistics, there just were no statistics to be collected.
They adopted over a long period the method of sending out questionnaires running to 100 or 120 questions. They trained young agricultural students in the universities who went out with these questionnaires. They went into the houses and asked the farmers perhaps 100 or 120 questions, recorded their answers which were then given into the hands of experienced surveyors who elicited from them, as near as they could get to it, the real common denominator of truth in the 500 or 600 questionnaires completed and then they got an approximation of the costings of those farms. But remember they would be dealing with a group of farms, all of which were under the general influence of the landlord of the whole estate, following the particular pattern that he wanted followed and therefore they were all engaged in the same kind of farming. We, however, have no landlords in this country, thanks be to God, and every tenant proprietor, every ten-acre man, can run his farm whatever way he likes.
Can you picture what would happen if I sent 50 enumerators into the Province of Connaught with a book of 120 questions and each one sailed into the kitchen of a farmer, licked his thumb, turned over the first page and started? Would he not get a very short answer, whether he went to Cavan, Wicklow or Mayo? From the fellow from whom he did not get a short answer, he would get, as the Deputy suggests, a cup of tea, and he would get the particular kind of answer which that farmer thought would suit his best interests. Did any Deputy ever compare the statistics of the yield of wheat per acre as computed by the Civic Guards, who inquired from individual farmers how much wheat their crop yielded, with the figures of the entire quantity of wheat which went into the mills? An examination of the figures would show that, between the farms and the mills, a vast quantity of wheat vanished into thin air, for the simple reason that every farmer who got two and a half barrels squared his shoulders and said he got eight barrels to the acre—"the finest crop seen in this parish for a long time".
The Civic Guards do not ask that question.
Whatever chance the Civic Guards would have of getting an honest answer, if I sent out 20 or 25 young lads from the agricultural colleges, they would have a very much poorer chance of getting an answer which corresponded accurately with the truth, where the individual farmer felt that it was only by his own good will that he was required to give an answer, that if he did not want to give an answer he was free to refuse, and that there was no obligation on him to give any answer at all. The only man who would give an answer is the man who thought it would do him good to do so. If he thought it would do him harm, he need give no answer at all. There is no obligation on any man to answer any "trotter" who goes into his house and cross-questions him in his own kitchen. In this country now he is free to throw him out if he does not want him.
How are we going to get the kind of statistics, the kind of information, from 500 small farmers which we can feel will bear a close relation to fact? If we do not get this kind of answer and we bring back our 500 questionnaires and set a whole highly trained staff to evolve a picture from the information contained in them, the picture may relate to the beau ideal of what 500 farmers think a farm ought to be, but it will have very little relation to the kind of farms our people live on. Deputy Cogan says that perhaps a method whereby we might derive a yardstick with which to measure would be to set up a demonstration farm in a district run by a graduate of one of our agricultural colleges, but the people in whom I am interested primarily are the small farmers who do not employ any labour at all, who run their farms as family institutions. If I put a young graduate into a small 20-acre farm which cannot be run by the unaided labour of one man, the young fellow will have to hire labour, and that completely dislocates his whole costings vis-a-vis his neighbour who runs it with family assistance.
Deputy Cogan says he wants to see the farmers getting a fair profit. I agree, but I want something more. I want to make of agriculture an industry in which those engaged in it who employ labour will be able to pay their workers a fair wage. It is a source of humiliation to me that the agricultural worker in this country, who, in my judgment, is the most highly skilled worker we have, should have the figure of 55/- a week associated with his name as a minimum wage. I hope to change that.