I move:—
That a sum not exceeding £9,387,700 be granted to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending the 31st day of March, 1952, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of the Minister for Agriculture, including certain Services administered by that Office, and for payment of certain Subsidies and sundry Grants-in-Aid.
I think, Sir, it would be appropriate in inaugurating this discussion if I permit myself to say: "Thanks be to God, spring has apparently at last made up its mind to come." We have so long lamented with Shelley that the winter wind continues to be a precursor, with the promised relief not showing on the horizon, that I think we might now fall back on Browning and, adapting his lines, say: "O! to be in Ireland, now that April is here." It is right, therefore, having expressed gratitude to Providence for the arrival of spring, to advert briefly to the fact that we have passed through an anxious and challenging autumn, winter and early spring, which period is unique in the meteorological history of this country, for that we have passed through the longest recorded period in history without more than 48 hours consecutive dry weather. It is true that, in certain months in previous years, there was a greater precipitation, but there is no previous record of a period extending from the 30th June to April which had in it no longer period than 48 hours without rain.
That, of course, has created great difficulties for the farming community and should evoke both sympathy and admiration for the exertions which the agricultural community have made, and are making, in an effort to catch up on the harvest which must unquestionably be three weeks late in the sowing. There is no use in blinding our eyes to the fact that we must anticipate repercussions of that in the autumn that lies ahead. Out of evil, however, one is legitimately entitled to seek some good. I think this good may, perhaps, be salvaged from the trying experience through which we have passed. One is, that the attention of farmers everywhere will be directed to the unique advantage of the use of silage in lieu of, or in addition to, the traditional practice of making hay.
In a country with an annual mean precipitation of 42 inches, it is clear that the foundation of our winter supplies of live-stock products should be of a character which can be made and saved without reference to the quality of the weather. It is now possible to make excellent silage from a variety of crops, amongst which one of the best is grass, good grass. It is now clear that we can make first-class silage, without the erection of extensive silos. by simply digging a pit and correctly ensiling the material available to it in such a pit, providing the compression of the contents is adequate, and providing it is covered suitably to protect it from the weather. Every acre of land so employed will provide the live-stock farmer with a larger yield of winter fodder than he could hope to get from it with any form of hay.
The second lesson that we may learn, with advantage, from our trying experience is the folly of pretending that, in a climate such as ours, we can with any degree of certainty depend on our domestic production of wheat for our essential bread supplies. With the best will in the world, it was not possible for the farmers of this country to sow the acreage of wheat for this year in spring that they would have wished to sow, because it simply was not possible to get the seed into the soil. There is still time, and there will be time until the end of April, safely to sow certain varieties of spring wheat. I know that very considerable acreages are at this moment being sown, but we should not lose sight of the fact that our circumstances make it a dangerous thing to pretend that our domestic resources can effectively provide for the bread requirements of our people under modern conditions. The wheat we elect to grow here in our rotations cannot ever be more than a part, more or less substantial, of our total wheat requirements, much of which will continue to be drawn from Canada, the United States, Australia and the Argentine, as circumstances and finance permit.
Now, as I adhere to my view that results are the best tests of policy, and that facts are the best arguments, I have taken the opportunity of offering to Deputies the paper which is on every Deputy's desk to-day setting out certain statistics and recording certain facts. It will be no harm, briefly, to recapitulate certain of the more striking changes which have taken place during the last 12 months. If we look, first, at the acreage of crops, and bear in mind the serious inclemency of the weather, it is not discouraging to find that out of 366,012 acres of wheat in 1950, we have collected into the mills as at to-day—these records speak only up to the 24th March—2,000,000 barrels of wheat, while an acreage of 579,646 of wheat in 1947 yielded us no more than 1,463,200 barrels.
The yield of oats and barley shows no striking variation, though it is interesting to see that in 1950 from 123,241 acres of barley, we had 119,000 tons of barley, whereas in 1947 from 145,983 acres of barley we had a return of no more than 88,300 tons. When we come, however, to the live-stock enumeration of the January census, the figures must be accepted with a certain reserve because they are not of the same exhaustive nature as the June census, but if there be any discrepancy in it we may assume that the discrepancy is approximately of the same dimensions in every year. It is interesting to note that, when this Government came into office in January, 1948, the total number of our cattle was 3,531,500 head which to-day is 3,910,600 head. Our sheep population in January, 1948, was 1,626,400 and is to-day 1,949,100, and is rising. Our total pig population in January, 1948, was 369,700, and is now 530,700. These figures include breeding sows the number of which was 39,700 in 1948, and is now 59,400.
I should like also to direct the special attention of the House to certain figures relating to our exports Our exports of cattle in 1947 were valued at £15,629,000, correct to the nearest £1,000, and in 1950 they were valued at £22,277,000. Our exports of poultry in 1947 were valued at £1,926,000 and in 1950, £3,916,000. Egg exports in 1947 were valued at £1,574,000 and in 1950, £5,146,000. Raw wool exports in 1947 were valued at £894,000 and in 1950, £3,516,000. Exports of bacon, hams, and other pig products in 1947 were nil and in 1950 were valued at £994,431. Exports of tinned beef in 1947 were valued at £753,000 and in 1950 at £1,541,000 Exports of chocolate crumb in 1947 were valued at £472,000 and in 1950, £2,785,000.
Deputies may wish to be informed of the present state of our stocks in connection with wheat for our bread supply and maize for our animal fodder supply. It is comforting to know that on 31st March, 1951, the wheat in stock, floated, loading and waiting to be loaded was 2,100,000 odd barrels and in respect of maize coming within the same categories we have 121,000 tons. This satisfactory situation would not be a source of equanimity unless we were satisfied as to the available storage waiting to keep it. In that connection, a careful survey of the storage has been proceeding and, in round figures, we count on having available in September, 1951, in silos at ports and mills and in storage at mills, merchants' and maltsters' emergency storage up and down the country approximately 421,000 tons of storage which represents approximately one year's wheat supply, were it all employed to that end.
In regard to the uneconomic fraction of that storage, I should tell the House that one of the principal difficulties is that, annexed to it, we have not got adequate drying facilities. To provide adequate fixed drying facilities at all points would not be feasible between now and harvest time. To surmount that, we are in process of acquiring four mobile drying plants which can be used to dry and fill one storage unit and then be transferred to another until all are filled with grain in a condition which we may depend on to keep.
It has been the policy of this Government since it took office primarily to seek for security for the farmers over a long term. Before dwelling on that in detail, the House may be intrigued to have one rather startling statistic about our exports of rabbits, because in the last six months it appears that we have shipped to Great Britain no less than 6,750,000 rabbits which have yielded the astonishing return of over £1,000,000. I cannot regard this as a very important contribution to the agricultural exports of this country and, if we could eliminate the rabbit altogether, it is an export which I would gladly see vanish. But, as between gassing them and burying their carcases and trapping them while their carcases furnish prime meat when we can collect £1,000,000 for them, on the whole I suppose it is as well to trap them while in prime condition, and to sell them, rather than engage in intensive destruction. I want, however, to make this quite clear to the House, that, if at any time the rabbit should expand to the dimensions of a pest on the agricultural industry of the country, despite the value that at present attaches to them, I would not hesitate to recommend to Oireachtas Éireann that an intensive destruction policy should be initiated with a view to wiping them clean off the face of the land.
I do not give that export statistic from the point of view of the income, but merely as an interesting thing to show what an extraordinary power of supply is inherent in an urgent demand accompanied by an adequate price. If there is a demand and a readiness to pay a reasonable price for a food of any kind, it can almost always be filled. But, if there is a demand from outside one's own domestic circle of the nation, despite the best endeavour, unless the price is commensurate with the effort required to produce foodstuffs, it cannot be made to come forth. From the rabbit shipment a lesson is to be learned; that if the consignee were prepared to pay for a very much more normal agricultural produce a price in any way comparable to the uncontrolled price which has been paid for the last six months for rabbits, the consequential exports of a normal agricultural produce to that destination would be proportionately growing. But instead of that I have to report with profound regret that they are rapidly declining in so far as eggs are concerned. Why it should be deemed expedient to pay 4/6 apiece for rabbits and 2d. apiece for eggs must be for ever a mystery to me. So long as that continues, those who desire to pay such a price will get rabbits and no eggs, and that is a result which affords me profound regret. I would prefer to ship eggs and rabbits to that consignee, but, if I were constrained to choose between the two, I would certainly prefer to consign expanding quantities of eggs rather than multitudes of trapped rabbits.
It has been the policy of this Government to secure for the farmers stability and a decent standard of living for those who own the land and those who work upon it. To secure that, it was necessary to get not only a good price but the assurance that over a long term, if they kept up the production of agricultural output, they had no reason to apprehend that there would be a consequential assault on price levels. I am glad to be able to report to the House that in respect of cattle, sheep and milk we have secured for the farmers over a long term guaranteed minimum prices which should enable them to know with certainty what the product of their labour will be worth when they bring it to market. I have every reason to hope that in the next two or three weeks we shall be able to provide a similar long-term guaranteed market for all the pigs that our people can produce at a price in or about 220/- per cwt. deadweight for bacon.
I have every confidence that the market available for fowl, chickens, hens and turkeys will be highly remunerative taking the long-term view; but I am obliged to state that in my considered judgment, unless the price available for eggs is of a character to attract the average countrywoman to increase the number of her flock and the output of eggs generally, there is very little prospect of any great expansion in our fowl exports. If the price of eggs were satisfactory and if the price of fowl continues satisfactory, as I believe it will, the potentialities of expansion are vast. But in the absence of a satisfactory price for eggs, I cannot see the supplies of fowl from this country being as great as we would wish to make them.
The purpose of circulating the White Paper which has been sent to Deputies is mainly to abbreviate the length of my observations in introducing this Estimate. I mean no discourtesy to the House if I do not follow the sub-heads closely, as I believe substantially all we want to know is furnished here. However, I am at their disposal to give them any further information they may require in the course of the debate. There are a few special matters to which I would like to draw the attention of Deputies before I conclude.
I am happy to report that the co-operative scheme for the growing, storing and marketing of apples based on Dungarvan is now under way and we have horticultural instructors operating in that area. The farmers seem to be enthusiastically joined in the enterprise and I am not without hope that with the new planting this year and next year, we shall pass the 500-acre mark and continue to expand. I think I have good reason for being sure that the class of apples produced under the supervision available there will equal the best that is to be had from any orchard in the world and will command for those who grow and market them a highly remunerative price. It is a particular source of satisfaction to me that the project is being carried out by the co-operative effort of the farmers so that my contribution requires to be no more than facilitating them in getting under way, and, my having done so, they will carry on themselves. That, of course, is the best way for an enterprise of that kind to be administered.
The scheme adumbrated by the Department last year, and since proceeding, for the suppression of contagious abortion in cattle is an unmeasured success, a greater success in this country than in any other country in the world. I am happy to report to the House that the results of last year's inoculation have been most satisfactory in suppressing contagious abortion in herds where heretofore it had been endemic. The demand for the services of inoculation is a striking tribute by the farmers to their own confidence in the plan.
I should like to tell the House now of an interesting experience we had in running to earth a veterinary problem which afflicted the West of Ireland for many generations. In the Gaeltacht a condition of "Brios Bruan" and "Galra Trua" had been long known as a scourge. Brios bruan resulted in a debility in cattle on the mainland for which the traditional remedy was to send them out to a neighbour on an island; strangely enough, on the islands the Galra Trua presented a somewhat analogous picture of debility in cattle, the traditional remedy for which was to send the cattle so afflicted to a neighbour on the mainland. The interesting thing was that both these venerable remedies were signally successful. If one has been reared and lived in the province of Connacht, as I have, one has a healthy respect for the traditional knowledge of the old people and, though it does not seem sometimes to be either logical or comprehensible, one comes to know that the old people do not do things just for fun. It seemed to me, however, with the resources we now have at our disposal, to be a somewhat inadequate procedure simply to bow our heads in deference to the old people and leave things as they were. It was an inconvenient arrangement for the people on the mainland to send their cattle to the island and it was often equally inconvenient for the people on the island to send their cattle to the mainland. Accordingly, I despatched a team of veterinary surgeons to the west to investigate these two conditions in an effort to find out if more convenient remedies could be devised.
After a careful search conducted by one of the most distinguished officers of my Department, we established that brios bruan was aphosphorosis plus copper deficiency; and Galra Trua was parasitic worms. I make no apology for delaying the House a moment to show how the extraordinary devices employed by the old people had precisely met these two difficulties. If the mainland beast was suffering from aphosphorosis the trouble was due to the fact that he had no access to phosphorus. A period of convalescence on the island meant that when the island neighbour received the cattle he allowed them to stray on the shore. The moment the cattle had access to the shore, they hastened to the seaweed beds and extracted from them such of the seaweed as was phosphorescent and ate it, thus restoring the phosphorus balance in their diet. The affected cattle from the island, who were suffering from Galra Trua, were suffering from parasitic stomach worms and, being on restricted grazing, every time they shook off the infestation they reinfested themselves because the droppings of cattle contain the stomach worm. While the cattle remained closely concentrated on infected land, no matter how often they threw off the infection they subsequently reinfested themselves by picking up the worm again in their grazing. But when the island cattle came ashore for their convalescence, they were turned out on the mountain and, as the range on the mountain was much too large ever to become densely infected as the smaller island pasturages did, the beasts threw off the infection on the mountain and did not become reinfected. After a short convalescence therefore on the mainland the beast was restored to health.
Unfortunately, because of lack of knowledge of the source of these troubles the island people used to bring their cattle back to the island following their cure and the mainland people brought their cattle back to the mainland whereupon they not infrequently developed the same symptoms all over again. Now that we have discovered the source of Galra Trua it has been possible for us to provide the people with hexachloroethane and phenothiazine and spray the land with sulphate of copper, thus destroying infestation of the land and curing chemically the condition of the beast. And we have been able on the mainland to provide the people with dicalcium phosphate which provides the necessary phosphate in the cattle's diet by giving them an occasional drink, and the trace of cobalt in their diet without which cattle suffer and sheep develop pine.
Nor is this the end of an interesting story, because those of us who were born west of the Shannon are familiar with the chronic affliction of the small farmer who brings his yearling calf to the fair and there is told that 10/- or £1 must be deducted because it is a "yalla-looking" calf. I was often troubled to know why the poor man had to suffer that deduction because his calf was "yalla". It is not really yellow but a rather poor orange red colour which is much disliked by those who deal in yearling cattle. The man who is relatively prosperous rarely has a "yalla" beast but the poor man frequently has. I thought that was a condition, seeing that it is an affliction of many of our poor neighbours, to which the veterinary research institution might appropriately turn their mind. With their customary skill and versatility, they did so and, by consultation with colleagues abroad and by their own exertions, they established that the quality of a "yalla" beast is cobalt deficiency and if anybody has a "yalla" calf and will consult the veterinary surgeon or the leaflet of the Department of Agriculture, he will find that, by administering cobalt in suitable quantities over the appropriate term, his "yalla" calf will turn into a dazzling mahogany yearling, with material financial advantage to himself and to his neighbour, and with the utterly gratifying result that, when he brings the beast to the fair, his blushes will be spared because there is nothing more embarrassing than to stand in the market place or fair green with a "yalla" calf and to have every helpful neighbour in the countryside saying: "That is a nice calf, but he is very ‘yalla'." I do not know if the House shares my satisfaction in the isolation of these simple problems which most people consider to be beneath the attention of the great, but I think these things matter much more to our people in their everyday life than the wider policies which perhaps may sound more becoming on the lips of the political head of one of our largest Departments of State.
I want to say a word, too, about the marketing of fowl and turkeys. Last autumn, the welkin was made to ring by every fowl buyer and turkey dealer in Ireland that a most cruel and savage outrage was being perpetrated on this disinterested body of men because we were canalising fowl exports through Eggsports, Limited. They pointed out that freedom, Magna Charta, the Bill of Rights and all the foundations of human liberties were being struck at by our failure to give them a free field. I thought they were wrong. To tell the truth, my primary interest was to see that the producer got a suitable and remunerative price. If the fowl dealers could get a living handling the stuff, they were very welcome to it, so far as I was concerned, but the first and all-essential aim with me was to see that those who reared the birds got paid for them. I fixed the price at 4/- per lb. for turkeys. In the early part of the autumn, there was no doubt that turkeys were making up to 6/- and 6/6 per lb. and there was loud lamentation, but, about a fortnight before Christmas, the market broke in London and turkeys fell to 2/6.
If we had not canalised exports, what would have been the position? The dealers would have paid up to 6/- for turkeys in the first two weeks in December, and, when the market broke, they would have had on their hands thousands of pounds weight of turkeys at 6/6, and they would have had two weeks between then and Christmas to recover their losses. Those whose turkeys had to be marketed between 14th and 24th December would have had not only to take the lower price obtained on the British market, but would have had to suffer a levy as well to recover the mistakenly high price paid in the early part of the season and the people in the latter two weeks in December would have got, perhaps, 1/9 per lb. for their turkeys. In the process, many fowl dealers would have been wiped out. By canalising exports, everybody got 4/- per lb.; every fowl buyer and dealer in Ireland got a modest but reasonable margin of profit; and nobody suffered any loss. I think that, having stood all the abuse in October, November, and December, I am entitled to that moment of recrimination, now that April is here.
The ground limestone problem, I think, is now reaching a solution through the scheme at present in operation whereby any farmer anywhere in Ireland can have as much ground limestone as his land requires delivered to his farm or to the nearest point thereto on a hard road at 16/- per ton in bulk in six-ton lots. But I am conscious that we have become so well accustomed to amenity in rural Ireland that the absence of spreading facilities has caused uneasiness. Fortunately, we have been able to solve that problem as well. Ground limestone, unlike burned lime, is storable in the open and does not deteriorate if rain should fall upon it. In fact, for spreading, some people will say that it is better to allow it to weather in the open for some time. We propose, and the appropriate advertisement will appear in the newspapers in the course of the next ten days, to make available, on the basis of one-third grant and one-third loan, the purchaser putting up the remaining one-third from his own money, suitable lime-spreading machinery to cost £250 per unit, which I hope country boys will get their fathers to buy for them, so that they may provide for their neighbours the service of spreading the lime which the limestone grinding company has deposited in their yard. It is a good way to do it, to decentralise it. It provides a good living for the chap who wants to engage in the contract business, spreading lime at one time of the year, ploughing at another, and reaping at a third time of the year for reward, for his neighbours, and it brings within the reach of the smallest farmer amenities which could not possibly be provided on the basis of the small farmer buying the machinery for his own use. I should much prefer—pace Deputy Hickey—to see a man being his own boss and working for himself rather than being employed by the State or by anybody else. This device is designed to multiply the number of young persons in rural Ireland who will develop into independent contractors, working for themselves, in one sense of the word and for their neighbours, in another.
