The first consideration to which I have to direct the attention of the House is that at the beginning of this year we find ourselves in the remarkable position that the live-stock population of this country has fallen to the lowest levels that have ever been known in our recorded history. The number of milch cows on the last recorded date we have, which is the 1st June, 1947, is 1,156,327, the number of heifers in calf is 83,000 odd; the number of bulls is 25,000; the number of other cattle is 309,000 over three years old; two years old and under 3,678,000 odd; one year old and under two, 846,000 odd; and under one year 850,734. I direct the House in particular to the last two figures to which I have referred—one year old and under two, 846,803, and under one year 850,734. The figure for under one year, so far as I know, is lower than it has ever been in our history.
It was largely to correct the forces which had precipitated this disastrous development that I went to London last March and again in June. I am happy to say that I think the situation now obtains in which it will never be possible for influences outside this State again to bring to bear upon our live-stock policy influences which produce the kind of consequence to which I have drawn the attention of the House to-day. The figures I have just read out relate to cattle. They are bad enough. But when one turns to the relevant figure for poultry, pigs, sheep and every other branch of live stock and finds that in each case they represent a much more catastrophic decline than the cattle figures I have mentioned, one begins to get some idea of the magnitude of the problems that await solution. If, however, I were in a position where I could claim the land of the country was in a state of high fertility, we might look forward with less anxiety to the future. But when I tell the House that the fertility of the land in this country has reached a degree of degradation lower than has been known for 100 years past and that we have endemic in many parts of the country a condition known as aphosphorosis in which live stock consume the herbage of the soil and yet die of starvation because the soil contains no phosphates, and the grass growing thereon provides no phosphorus in the diet of the animals consuming it and the animals consequently die of deficiency disease, I think the House will realise that our problems grow in gravity and magnitude. When I remind the House that in some parts of the country we have reached the stage that we reap less wheat than we sow and that, for every barrel of wheat sown, we recover in the resultant crop less than the original barrel and that on almost every holding in Ireland the capacity of the land to return a volume of grain is still steadily declining, one might think reasonably that the prospect was sufficiently grave to daunt any Parliament responsible for the welfare of this country; more especially when one remembers that every citizen of this State, every Department of State, every person or body of persons earning an income, draw in the last analysis that income from the agricultural industry either directly or indirectly. However, I am prepared to offer words of encouragement to those who live not only upon the land and have their living directly from the land but to every other section of the community which depends on the farmers for its existence—to the doctors, to the lawyers, to the business men, to the trade unionists and the distributive workers and to everybody else whose means of livelihood would disappear overnight if the income of the farmers dried up.
I venture to say that, despite the grim spectacle with which we are confronted on the agricultural horizon, I still believe that we are standing now on the threshold of the greatest period of expansion in the agricultural industry of this country that we have ever known. I believe that in the course of the next five years we can confidently look forward to an expansion in the volume of output which will represent at least 25 per cent. of our existing volume and a consequential increase of close on 100 per cent. in the volume of our exports. I have deliberately chosen a conservative figure. Were I to reveal my true hopes I would perhaps set myself a target which our best joint efforts would fail to reach. I, therefore, elect deliberately for a target and if we fail to reach it then the fault will be largely mine, for I have no doubt that the farmers of this country will do their part, as they have always done, if given the materials, the implements and the opportunity. My job, as Minister for Agriculture, is to make available to them the materials and the instruments and to get them the opportunity to dispose of the fruits of their labour. That last I have already done. The others I am in process of doing. By my success or failure in that respect the agricultural record of this Government will ultimately fall to be judged.
In that connection I think it right to say that, in the course of the last few days, we have heard a good deal of talk in this House about Marshall Aid under the Marshall Plan. The House has learned, as proposed by the Government of the United States of America and by the administrator of the Marshall Plan, that the assistance available to this country should be by way of loan only. I must confess that that seems odd to me. We are one of the only countries in Europe who are in a position to say, if Marshall Aid be made available to our country by way of grant and a consequent fund created for expenditure in this country, that with the expenditure of that fund on the development of our agricultural industry, the rehabilitation of our land, the reconstruction of our farm buildings and the re-equipment of our farmers with modern implements and modern methods, almost 100 per cent. of the consequent increased production of necessary foodstuffs would flow directly into the vacuum which exists in Great Britain and on the Continent of Europe at the present time—a vacuum for food which, if it is not in part filled by us, will ultimately have to be filled by the United States of America. And yet we, being the only nation in Europe in a position to say, "If given Marshall aid in the form of grants, all our extra production will tend to lighten the burden of the princely generosity of the American people," are one of the very few nations in Europe to whom the administrator thinks it right to say: "In your case no grants will be made."
I think it unnecessary to say that, whether this country receives grants or not, we recognise and sincerely applaud the princely generosity of the American people in their approach to the difficulties of Europe at the present time. Fortunately, despite the very heavy material losses that the world war involved this country in, because our land was rendered comparatively infertile as a result of its exhaustion during the seven years of war and crisis which cut us off from supplies of fertilisers, we can carry on. Our people will not starve with or without Marshall Aid. But, for my part, I would have felt it a privilege to be a partner of the United States of America, albeit a very small one, in the task of relieving the difficulties and the hunger and misery that afflict the Continent of Europe.
Desirous as we may be to lend a hand in that task, we cannot do it if we have not the means wherewith to do it. Given the assistance of Marshall Aid grants, we can do a very great deal in the production of the highly nutritious foods for which Europe, and Great Britain especially, hunger. Without such grants we cannot produce this material. I am not without hope that before this plan is ended, that opportunity will be given to us to share it with the world and, if it is, I have no doubt that Irish agriculture will rise to the occasion and astonish those who look to it, both at home and abroad, by its exertions in producing for the hungry what the hungry need.
I propose to lay before the House, shortly, my hopes for an increase in the output volume of agricultural goods. I want to say this, that as that output rises it is of no interest to me if it does not mean profit for the farmer who produces it—though not excessive profit. I think we have demonstrated effectively very recently that where the opportunity offers excessive profit at the expense of an old consumer we do not want it and we would not take it. But, if we require to have a fair profit —and we would not take less—essential as that may be—and it is essential —there is something of equal importance. If the profits of those who own the land and have their living on the land are to rise, as I hope they will rise, there then devolves on those who own the land and live upon the land a corresponding obligation in justice to see that their workers, the agricultural workers of this country, share pari passu with every increase in the profit level of those who employ them.
I would like my five years in the Department of Agriculture to be judged a failure or a success by whether the agricultural workers have been raised to the level at least of the industrial workers. If, when I leave office, the agricultural workers, who are the most highly skilled, the hardest working and the most indispensable servants of our community, are still at the bottom of the scale, as they now are, then I am not fit to be Minister for Agriculture, and I would have failed in the most essential duty that devolves upon any person who holds the position I now hold. Let the House then realise that amongst my prime objectives is to put the farmers in a position to pay to their agricultural workers a wage commensurate with the work they do and comparable with the wage of any other artisan in this country, bearing in mind that of all the artisans, in my judgement in any case none is more highly skilled and none more indispensable than the agricultural workers.
What then is before us? I have never disguised in this House my opinion of wheat as a crop. In war time, when the seven seas are closed and ships no longer serve to bring supplies, it is the duty of any community to produce its requirements from its own resources, whatever those requirements may be; but only a fool imposes upon his people in times of peace the policies of war, just as only a fool attempts to face the world in time of war with the policies of peace. I hold precisely the same views now as I have always held about growing wheat on Irish land in times of peace when supplies are available from other sources. In my judgment it is a "cod" and a waste of land. This is a free country. The time has gone, I hope, in Ireland when, because for the moment I happen to be Minister for Agriculture, I shall have the right to go into every neighbour's land in Ireland and tell him what to sow here and what to sow there, when to get up in the morning and when to go to bed.
I was brought up in the old tradition of the three F's. One of these was fixity of tenure. Fixity of tenure meant two things in this country. The first was that no landlord could throw you out of your holding and the second was that you could throw any landlord or his bailiff out of your holding. I am happy to think that we have restored that rule in Ireland now. From the Minister for Agriculture down to the most junior inspector in my Department, he will enter on his neighbour's land in future by invitation or not at all.
I know there are a great many people in this country who have been persuaded, or who have persuaded themselves, that there is some high virtue to be associated with the growing of wheat. They feel that with all the strength and all the conviction that I feel the opposite. They have a right to live in their own country and they have a right to demand of their servant, whom they pay, that their legitimate feelings will be respected. They have a right to remind the Government that sits here, with a large Opposition Party, sitting in this Parliament, also to represent voters who voted for them, that the wishes of that minority are entitled to respect and that if they feel strongly that they should grow wheat, as I feel they should not, they should not be walked upon. I accept that view and, accepting it, very early I went to the Government and, the better to reassure the minority that their fundamental rights would be respected and that there was no desire to push them around or to trample on their susceptibilities, I asked the Government not only to guarantee a price this year, but to guarantee them a price for the next five years at a higher level than was ever fixed for wheat in this country.
Whatever the economies of that arrangement may be, I have not the slightest doubt in my mind it was the right course and I am prepared to defend it here or anywhere else. Its economics may be bad but it should be some signal to our neighbours in this country that, so far as this Government is concerned in any case, there will be no pushing our neighbours about and that in so far as is humanly consistent with reasonably good administration, the susceptibilities and the wishes of the minority will be given the respect and forbearance to which they are entitled, so long as such respect and for bearance are consistent with the mini mum efficiency necessary to carry on the agricultural policy of the State. I cannot undertake to set aside the policy of this Government and abandon it in cases where minorities feel strongly against it, but I do most gladly say that in so far as it is possible to fit in with the general policy of the country the particular desires of the minority on their own holdings, no pains will be spared to leave each individual farmer, be he of one belief or another, the fullest freedom in his own holding to do with it whatever he conceives it to be his duty to God to do. We have, therefore, for the next quinquennium in any case, guaranteed a price for wheat.
I want the farmers to produce next year 700,000 barrels of malting barley at least, for which I guarantee them a price higher than they received in any year for the last ten years. It will not be less than 55/- and it might be more. In that connection I want solemnly to register a protest against what seems to have been the cruel iniquity of having fixed prices of malting barley in this country at a figure ranging from 35/- to 45/-, less cartage from the farm to the maltster, when the world price for that barley was 60/- and over and when the brewers of this country were ready and willing to pay 60/- and over and were prevented from doing so by our own Government, with the consequence that, in the last five years, the barley farmers of this country were fined by our own Government £2,000,000 sterling which passed into the coffers of Arthur Guinness Son and Company and were thence extracted by the British Treasury in excess profits tax collected in Britain. The barley farmers of this country were taxed in the sum of £2,000,000 sterling for the benefit of the British Exchequer over a period of five years—between £400,000 and £500,000 per annum for five years for the benefit of the British Treasury. That will never happen again.
I want the farmers of this country to sow as large an acreage as they can of feeding barley and the seed necessary for that, of Scandinavian origin which produces a short straw and a heavy yield of nitrogenous barley, will be made available to those who wish to grow it. It is a feeding stuff which, in my judgment, has three-fourths at least of the feeding qualities of maize meal. According to scientific analysis, it is equal to maize meal but, being somewhat of a pragmatist myself, the scientists notwithstanding. I fed Indian meal and barley meal to pigs and the pigs that were getting Indian meal got fatter more quickly than the pigs that were getting the barley meal. I do not know what the scientists' explanation of that is, but the fact remains that if I were choosing between yellow meal and barley meal, I would give them Indian meal but, if you cannot get Indian meal, barley meal comes a good second.
Oats I need not speak of because their value is too well known. "Grow," I say to the farmers, "all the oats your land will produce and you will sell them profitably either in bag or on hoof during the winter and the spring of next year."
There is a guaranteed market for 50,000 tons of ware potatoes in Great Britain at £10 13s. 6d. per ton delivered f.o.b. at a port in Ireland between November and February and £11 8s. 6d. per ton delivered at the same port between February and May. None of us will grow rich on that, and if the British want any increased supplies of potatoes from this country, they will want to straighten themselves and pay a bit more for them; but there is no obligation. We will send them 50,000 tons, I believe, at this price this year, if the potato crop turns out as it looks like turning out. In any case, it is a useful basement to have under potato prices that, if any temporary surpluses occur, there is a price of £10 13s. 6d. at the port here up to February and £11 8s. 6d. thereafter. I am in a position to say to the House, however, that, in future years, if we wish to produce a greater acreage of potatoes, the British Government are prepared to take from us whatever acreage we are prepared to offer. If they want a larger acreage than we are at present offering them, they will have to do better than £10 13s. 6d. and £11 8s. 6d., and I intend to tell them so. If they are not prepared to go a bit higher—no hard feelings and no potatoes; if they are prepared to go a bit higher—mutual satisfaction and more potatoes.
We cannot get increased production if we are not in a position to rehabilitate the soil. We are, therefore, arranging to build up supplies of lime, and, in my judgment, the quantities of lime required for the next 50 years in this country are virtually unlimited. We propose that that lime should be supplied in two forms—perhaps in some sense in three forms, if we regard basic slag as a source of lime. The two forms with which the House will be most familiar are burned lime and crushed limestone. First, I want to say to the lime burners—there has been a good deal of misunderstanding, a good deal of unnecessary anxiety, and a good deal of, I am afraid, mischievous and mendacious talk going on through the country—that every lime kiln at present burning in this country will have burned the bricks out of itself before supplies of lime from it will cease to be necessary. The youngest lime burner in Ireland will be dead and buried, and enjoying celestial joy in heaven before a situation can ever conceivably arise in which the output of every lime kiln in Ireland will not be urgently required. Is that clear enough?
Therefore, let us hear no more of lime burners draping their kilns in crepe and sitting down by the waters of Babylon to weep for their prospective elimination and destruction. But over and above the total capacity of all the lime kilns burning all the limestone they can possibly burn, and they cannot burn too much, we propose, by the encouragement and stimulation of private enterprise, to set up a number of limestone grinding plants throughout the country. We could have done that directly as a Government and could have run them as Government plants, or we could induce various people to set up enough limestone grinding plants, some of a small character, to supply their own neighbourhood or from large plants designed to crush a sufficiency of limestone to enable them to despatch it over a wider area. Both types I hope to see employed, and we are already well advanced towards the realisation of plans to have one such plant located in South Kilkenny, which will be close enough to South Wexford to provide a good deal of their requirements, another in South Monaghan, another in North Cork, another in County Clare and another in the Sligo-Leitrim area. I am not without hope that we may see one reasonably soon in the Meath-Westmeath area.
I do not deny that I am an optimist. I am. Some of my more cautious friends say: "Oh, do not say anything about that until the machinery is on the spot, because what would happen to you if your hopes were not realised?" What harm is there in hoping? We are none the worse for that. This I say, that once I start hoping that there will be a limestone grinding plant in Meath-Westmeath, if my present runner does not pass the post, I will start another. But before you make up your mind to do something, you have to hope that some day you will do it. If you make up your mind never to hope about anything until you see it in front of you, you will be sitting like a bump on a log for the rest of your life, doing nothing. Many of my hopes may not come off, but a sufficient percentage of them will, to make a mighty change in the agriculture of this country, with the help of God.
With regard to super, I am authorised by the Government to bring into this country all the super we can buy. So far as I am concerned, I should like to see super used on tillage crops and ground rock phosphate on grass and hay. We can produce ground rock phosphate for about half the price of super, and I believe ground rock phosphate to be every bit as good a manure for grass and meadow as super ever was. There is no reason on God's earth why our farmers should be paying "hansel" to the sulphuric acid manufacturers in order to distribute phosphate in the form of superphosphate of lime, if ground rock phosphate will do the job just as well and save the farmers 4/- or 5/- per cwt. on the manure they have to spread. But it is true that, while ground rock phosphate will do for grass and meadow, and probably for turnips, superphosphate of lime, in one form or another, is necessary for tillage crops, and we must continue to use it in combination with other manures for that purpose.
Heretofore, it has been the practice in this country to use what we call triple-X super, which, according to the old reckoning, is 35 per cent. super. That is a very uneconomic way of handling super, because it means that you are carting about the country half a bag of dirt and half a bag of manure. I should like to see used, and I hope to see soon, not 35 per cent., but 60 per cent. super, which means that instead of carrying around half a bag of dirt and half a bag of manure in every bag of artificial fertiliser we use, there will be two-thirds manure and one-third dirt, which ought to reduce the freight charges.
No matter how we raise the concentration, it simply is not practical politics to raise the concentration of superphosphate higher than about 60 per cent., according to the old reckoning, and there must be some mixer with it to enable its proper distribution over the land. There is no reason why we should carry the mixture all over the country in the process of distribution, so that we will have to seek the cooperation of all our friends in accustoming our people to use superphosphate in a very much more highly concentrated form than they have been using it heretofore, in order to save on the cost element of transport which has heretofore bulked so large in the finite cost of a commodity like superphosphate of lime. We have got the promise of 10,000 tons of potash from France, and we will get some from Spain and some from elsewhere. I just do not want to talk about that yet, for fear mischievous persons might double-cross me before I get it in the bag.
We will get sulphate of ammonia and we will get nitrate of soda, but I want to say this: Our sole concern here is to raise the agricultural output of this country. It is common knowledge that the bulk of that increased production is going to be sold abroad and yet the I.E.F.C. informs us that our requirements of nitrogen are to be strictly limited. Now, I am getting tired of the I.E.F.C. and the A.B.C.Q.R.S.T.V. W.X.Y.Z. as well I am sure the world is going to realise that if a lot of these energetic gentlemen would go and do an honest day's work and stop tangling themselves up in their neighbours' hair it would be a damn sight better for themselves and a damn sight better for everybody else. They are so busy planning everybody else's life that we are rapidly reaching a stage when those who want and are prepared to use for the benefit of humanity at large and their legitimate profit the resources of the world will not be let get at these resources until we reach the stage that the available resources that could be turned into food for hungry men are left to rot because A.B.C.D.E.F.G. cannot make up their minds who is to get it and, by the time they have made up their minds whether Billy or Jack is to use the material, the material is either melted or rotted and neither Billy nor Jack will be allowed to put his hands on it. However, it appears we will have to endure them for another 12 months in any case, but, I.E.F.C. notwithstanding, I believe we will be able to get sufficient nitrogenous manures to carry out the work we have to do. We could do more if they would get out of our way, but, for the time being, they do not appear to intend to do so.
There is no use getting all these materials and making them available to the farming community if the farming community are just going to spread them at random on the land. I want to suggest to every farmer in this country that, when he contemplates a comprehensive programme of rehabilitation of his land by the distribution of expensive artificial fertilisers, he should first get the county committee of agriculture to test his soil. We have established in Johnstown Castle now an adequate service. I know that for some time it took a long time to get any answer, that if you had your soil tested it might be three months or four months before you would get the test back. Any farmer in this country now who gets his land tested will have the result back in his hand within 14 days of the inspector being on his holding, telling what the soil of his field requires, what he ought to put out if he wants to make the soil maximum efficient, and, without that information, it is inevitable that he will waste a lot of good money putting out on his land the kind of thing the land does not really want, while in fact he may fail to put out the one thing without which the land cannot possibly adequately produce.
I am not going to go on any man's land and test it for him, whether he likes it or not, but there is no farmer, no matter how small or how big, who cannot have his land tested by sending a postcard to the local county committee of agriculture, and if there is any farmer, from the ten-acre man up to the man who has a thousand acres, who, on sending that postcard, does not get prompt and immediate attention, if he will do me the kindness of communicating with me, I undertake that he will get it within 48 hours of receiving his letter.
But, there is nobody going to get his soil tested until he asks for it. I would be glad if Deputies beyond, particularly, would be as busy moving about amongst their neighbours telling them of the availibility of that service as they have been busy instructing their neighbours in certain other items of what, for the time being, we shall call knowledge, if not veracity.
During this time, when phosphates must still be somewhat scarce, I commend to the larger farmers and those who have equipment to consider the desirability of sowing phosphates with the seed. As far as we can find out, if phosphates are sown with corn through a corn drill, you can reduce the requirements of phosphate of your crop as much as 50 per cent. One of the most revolutionary discoveries that has been made during the war was made quite by chance and that was that if you sowed the phosphate manure with the corn through a corn drill, two astonishing results would follow—(1) the corn grew with all the vigour of a heavily manured crop and (2) the weeds were all stunted because the artificial manure did not reach the weeds and they grew in such numbers that they choked one another but the corn, amply supplied with the phosphate, grew away from the weeds and you had this extraordinary consequence of a crop of redoubled vigour and a hitherto unknown process of quasi-cleansing of your land.
All of those who want to grow potatoes, I beg of them to get out of my neighbours' good old practice of saying that if you have farmyard manure there is no need to put out artificials. There is no one can grow potatoes for sale in this or any other country without artificial fertiliser. Again I apply to my friends on the other side of the House to be as busy spreading that news through rural Ireland as they have been spreading other items of information.