Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 1 Jul 1954

Vol. 146 No. 6

Committee on Finance. - Vote 27—Agriculture (Resumed).

Mr. Moher

Before I moved to report progress last night I had been complaining of the ambiguity of the report of the Dairying Commission where they used the expression: "a reasonably high milk inheritance". I had given a table which I asserted was much more specific. The Minister asked for the reference. I have tried in the meantime to find the reference but have failed. I promise to supply the reference.

I have particulars in this table of the yield of butter fat per cow; food unit consumed per lb. butter fat produced, and butter fat per acre produced, for the following breeds:— Dutch Friesian, New Zealand Jersey, Danish Jersey, and Irish shorthorn. Dutch Friesian: yield of butter fat per cow, 310 lb.; food units consumed per lb. of butter fat produced, 21.1; butter fat per acre produced, 105 lb. New Zealand Jersey: yield of butter fat per cow, 250 lb.; food units consumed, 18.7; butter fat per acre produced, 119 lb. Danish Jersey: yield of butter fat per cow, 270 lb.; food units consumed per lb. of butter fat produced 19.8; butter fat per acre produced, 112 lb. Irish shorthorn: yield of butter fat per cow, 180 lb.; food units consumed per lb. of butter fat produced, 30.6.; butter fat per acre produced, 73 lb. It is obvious, while I have not been able to dig up the reference, that this was something computed, because here underneath I have: A fodder yield of 1,600 lb. S.E. is assumed in each case, while the average yield of cows in creamery districts is taken at the inflated figure of 500 gallons and 3.6 per cent. butter fat.

It has been stated that the British shorthorn is barren of any blood that would provide us with a competitive dairy cow. I will give the following table of a survey made by the British Milk Marketing Board, taken from the registers of the British milk marketing boards of England and Wales. This survey covered three breeds: Friesian, dairy shorthorn and Jersey. The number of pedigree bulls surveyed in the case of the Friesian breed was 3,281; bulls whose daughters averaged over 350 lb. of butter fat, 621, or 19 per cent.; bulls whose daughters averaged over 400 lb. butter fat, 141, or 4.9 per cent. Dairy shorthorns: number of bulls surveyed, 2,140; number of bulls whose daughters averaged over 350 lb. butter fat, 23, or 1 per cent.; number of daughters with average of 400 lb. butter fat, 2, or .01 per cent. Jersey: 962 bulls producing 159 daughters with an average of over 350 lb. butter fat, or 16.5 per cent.; and with daughters over 400 lb. butter fat, 65, or 6.7 per cent.

These figures would seem to prove that even in England, the fount of our supply of dairy shorthorn bulls, they have not a blood which would produce a competitive dairy cow of shorthorn breed.

Last night the Minister referred me to the herd at the Albert College. I want to say first of all that I was speaking of the consequences of the Livestock Breeding Act. The Minister I am sure will agree that the herd at the Albert Collge is not a consequence of the Livestock Breeding Act. He will, I am sure, agree that, while the heifers may have been bought in the Dublin market, in the selection of the bulls which raised the standard we had concentrated all the talent in his Department and that the Albert College, like many other institutions of its kind, some of them in private hands, is not a fair comparison. To me that indicates nothing.

As a matter of fact, I should like to give some idea of my mind on the matter by saying what Goldsmith said:—

"The robes which wrapped their limbs in silken sloth

Have robbed the neighbouring fields of half their growth."

That is typical of many of these so-called show pieces we find all over the country. What we are concerned very much about is the herd, the small herd of the small dairyman, the herd of honest John Murphy and of the small holders who in this country in the aggregate constitute the basis of our dairying industry. These are the people in whom I am deeply interested. These are the people who have sent me from the dairying constituency of East Cork to say in this House what I have been saying outside for a long time.

I started off by bringing to the notice of the Minister the properties of the Dutch Friesian. He made particular reference in his statement yesterday to the properties of the Aberdeen Angus. I should like to hear if he has any reasonable objection to put forward in his reply why we should not cross good cows produced from Dutch bulls with the Aberdeen Angus. You are always safe with a breed that will colour mark. I am one of the people who never favoured the Whitehead cross because in some areas, particularly in the adjoining constituency of South Tipperary, I remember a time not long ago when the dominant crossbreed there was the Aberdeen Angus. But then the days of scarcity came and it was a case of bulk rather than quality, and in a matter of a few years the Aberdeen Angus cross completely disappeared from these areas and was replaced by the Whitehead. Now there is an obvious return to the Aberdeen Angus. Any butcher or person dealing in quality meat will tell you that from the point of view of the selective consumer the Aberdeen Angus is the better beef cross. The Whitehead cross produces an excess of yellow fat, fat of all kinds. Now, excess fat and yellow fat in beef is objectionable to most people and I think it is wise to encourage the production and promotion of the Aberdeen Angus cross.

I want to deal with something here in connection with the Dutch Friesian. We all know that in the production of the Friesian in England, as regards contour, they went the very opposite to what we did here with the shorthorn. Contour was completely thrown overboard. They concentrated on milk production and they produced a loose, awkward, ramshackle cow, the old British Friesian. They got the milk average but they did not get contour in their Friesian cow. The cow had bad conformity, was hard to keep up, and was a high consumer of food. In more recent times they have set about removing this malconformation in their Friesian herds there. They have done that, or they have set about doing it, by importing into the country a number of Dutch Friesian bulls.

I have looked on these importations more from the angle that the British when they went to Friesland to purchase those bulls could have got better bulls, but they did a wise thing: they got the bulls genetically suited to repair the malconformation, the maldevelopment, in that loose, ramshackle cow. In other words, they concentrated on bringing in Dutch bulls that would reduce the hind legs of this animal. I think it is absolutely ridiculous for us here to go to England to buy the progeny of those bulls, when we could go to Holland and get a better bull, a better Dutch Friesian bull, than the British have introduced over there. There is one Dutch Friesian bull sited in the insemination station at Mitchelstown, and I hope the Minister will have an opportunity some time in the future of going to Mitchelstown and going to the Friesian station there and making a comparison side by side with some outstanding Herefords and seeing his conformation and seeing the layers of beef which he put on.

I have here some interesting figures of what the British brought in and what the dams of those bulls on the average are recorded for. First of all, the average yield of all cows in Holland is about 380 lb. of butter fat. The dams of the bulls used in Dutch Friesian A.I. centres are the progeny of 400 lb. butter fat cows. Dams imported by the British in 1951 averaged over 481 lb. butter fat for all lactations. In addition to this, the Dutch Friesian will, I submit, produce as good a store as the Irish shorthorn.

I would now say something about breeds. While I have spoken at some length on the Friesian, I am not unmindful of the characteristics of other breeds. I think it is ridiculous to act as we do at present regarding the breeds on the hillsides—and we have a number of dairy farms on the hillsides up to 2,000 feet above sea level. If the Minister or officers of his Department were to go into those areas, as I have done, they could study the type of shorthorn seen there. Look at it. The thing is stunted on the hillsides. Look at the udder, the bag; it has a bag like a mountain ewe. Is there not something wrong, if you go into Limerick from the month of October until March and see the weighty shorthorn cows, whose average weight is about 11 cwt., knee deep in mud in the paddocks in the heavy soil there? The soil is wholly unsuitable for such a weighty animal. Would not the sensible thing be to——

Mr. Dillon

House the cow.

Mr. Moher

In that particular area the sensible thing would be to get a light article, to introduce in that particular county the Jersey, whose average weight is around 7 cwt. She would not bog down in the Limerick soil. Then we know that from the creamery angle the Jersey is 40 per cent. a butter producer, a better converter of food into butter fat than any other breed.

Getting back to the hillsides, we have quite a number of our dairy farms on the hills up to 1,500 and 2,000 feet up. I have made a particular study of the type of cow on the hillside. They are stunted. Would not the sensible thing be to introduce a breed whose environmental background would make it suitable for the dairy farm on the hills? Why should not our Department concentrate on the development of the Kerry, and even of the Ayrshire, in those areas? The man on the hillside wants something like that. Regarding their progeny, I have seen calves that came from the hills as yearlings and I would be sorry for the beef man who took them over. There was evidence again of underdevelopment. There was obvious evidence that those animals suffered from the mineral deficiencies which are known to exist on our hillsides.

Mr. Dillon

Why not correct the mineral deficiencies?

Mr. Moher

We have got some way on the road, as the Minister knows, to correcting the mineral deficiencies; but it will take a long, long time and I am afraid the Minister will be a very old man before we have got all our farmers to think in terms of scientific correction.

Mr. Dillon

Oh, no.

Mr. Moher

I pass that over to the Minister and in five years' time—and if we are both breathing the free air overground—I would be delighted— that is, if he is going to run for the five years—if he can boast that he has convinced every farmer in the Republic that there is such a thing in the soil of Ireland as mineral deficiency.

Mr. Dillon

Will the Deputy help me?

Mr. Moher

Yes, Minister, I assure you.

Mr. Dillon

That is a bargain.

Mr. Moher

I assure the Minister I will do all I can. It is my job, it is the job of every Deputy in the House, no matter to what side of the House he belongs, to make any contribution he can to the well-being of the rural section of our community.

Mr. Dillon

Hear, hear!

Mr. Moher

I stated yesterday evening that we had engaged in a very slow and tortuous process in developing these shorthorns. Although it is not the announced policy of the Minister's Department, are we not retracing our footsteps? Are we not now trying to muddle along and de-beef this shorthorn? Then I pose the question: What will happen if, at the end, we fail to bring home the beef? I have maintained that we inherited in our Department of Agriculture a bad tradition: we inherited a commonwealth outlook. One of the things that has amused me, as a new Deputy of this House and as one who has observed successive Ministers for Agriculture in action, was that, no matter how much they disagreed or scalped one another, the one thing on which they always agreed was on the particular breed of cow, this phenomenon known as the dual-purpose cow. I am extremely suspicious, and I have accused heads of our Departments of indoctrinating their subordinates and passing down this wretched virus which has afflicted our Department of Agriculture. I will go further. I have even, in another place, said that Ministers entering Merrion Street are subjected to conditioning.

It is very obvious that one of the things that the Minister will find in his room at Merrion Street when he goes there is a record—the Minister for Agriculture has already found it. There is a record there, and every now and then he is given a new rôle—what the Americans call "disc jockey". Each successive Minister for Agriculture—one after another—had his turn at the turntable and each one put on the record and it played this: "The dual-purpose cow is the best in the world." On the other side, some time when he inadvertently turned up the wrong side, there was a recording of the Minister's own voice—the voice of successive Ministers for Agriculture— saying: "We can never again compete in the competitive markets of the world for dairy produce——"

Mr. Dillon

I never said that. Only Fianna Fáil Ministers say that.

Mr. Moher

Each successive Minister for Agriculture——

Mr. Dillon

No.

Mr. Moher

Yes. Each successive Minister for Agriculture has faithfully played the two sides of that record.

Mr. Dillon

No, no.

Mr. Moher

I will quote on some future occasion the Minister as having played it, Deputy Walsh, Deputy Dr. Ryan, every succeeding Minister. There was one exception. He got the record and was about to break it when he was thrown out himself; that was Deputy Patrick Smith.

Mr. Dillon

Who threw him out?

Mr. Moher

I want to get finished. All the crimes that are committed are committed in the name of the Minister and, theoretically, the Minister is responsible in this House for all the sins of commission and omission of his Department.

Mr. Dillon

Of my predecessor?

Mr. Moher

In his Department.

Mr. Dillon

God forbid that I should bear that burden of guilt.

Mr. Moher

Very early on, our Department of Agriculture fell out of the race.

Mr. Dillon

No. It is the best Department of Agriculture in the world.

Mr. Moher

That, again, is part of the record. We missed the race away back when we had an opportunity of holding that proud place which we once held as the first exporters in Europe of dairy produce. We turned in another direction.

The Minister is now in a very unenviable position. One of the things which I think any Minister presiding in Merrion Street would live in fear and terror of is a surplus of any dairy product. It would, I would say, become radioactive in his Department.

Mr. Dillon

You are telling me.

Mr. Moher

You know, as well as I do, that down through the years, dairying has been carried on. It is a tradition. If you look at the records you will find that our dairy cow population has moved up and down only slightly, that it has remained static at between 1,250,000 and 1,500,000. If there is evidence that there are forces abroad which will contribute to an increase in our milk yields, I say the bigger proportion of that increase will come not from bulls but from an improved grass technique which I hope to deal with later on. The Minister may find himself from that improved technique with a surplus of dairy produce.

Again, we know that there was a time when we could have come in on a starving market during the war when our opponents' dairy economy was geared to supply the needs of one belligerent and when the other was looking for all the butter they could buy, we were in the unfortunate position that we were not able to supply our own population. Then—I do not intend to go into all the circumstances dealing with it—the most peculiar thing happened. Our gallon-age began to go up.

Mr. Dillon

When?

Mr. Moher

I cannot give the exact date, but if the Minister will study the records he will see that we have and I believe we have a persistent and systematic increase in our milk gallon-age. I can observe that even in my own herd. Any creamery manager will tell you that the average is going up. Manures are available and there is an improvement in grass technique. We can expect in the future that we shall have a substantial increase from our dairy cows.

Mr. Dillon

Hear, hear!

Mr. Moher

I am afraid that another day may come when the Minister will not say, "Hear, hear." However, are we now in a peculiar position? The Minister knows as well as any Deputy who has studied the matter that the Irish creameries in the British market are there to fill a pro tem need. He knows as well as I do that if you fail to compete in one dairy produce you are out for the whole lot. That is very much our position. We are not there as competitors; we have not been there as competitors. We have been there to supply the pro tem needs of the British. When they were able to purchase Canadian cheese, we were there until then. Then we were asked to gather up our impedimenta and clear out—and we are almost out for cheese.

The same thing goes for condensed milk. We are on the way out for that. Again, in the powdered milk business, I believe there is a substantial reduction in the amount wanted from us. Now we seem to have put all our eggs in the one basket—into the chocolate crumb. Last year I think there was something in the region of £18,000,000 worth of chocolate crumb exported from this country. We got, I believe, at peak, a figure like 40,000 tons but as far as I am aware that figure is now substantially reduced.

They are in the peculiar position in England at the moment that they have a surplus of liquid milk over their liquid milk requirements of almost twice our total output in milk. What will happen in the coming year nobody can foretell. I would not press the Minister to say what will happen in the coming year. He could not reliably say in this House that we would be afforded in the British market the same quota that was given to us this year for chocolate crumb. Let us study the figures. I saw a figure recently where in the first three months of last year they converted something like 2.3 million gallons into chocolate crumb but in the first three months of this year they converted 8.9 million gallons into chocolate crumb. That in itself should be a pointer to the direction in which we are going.

Mr. Dillon

Is it not a great blessing that we are not in the position of having only Jersey cows?

Mr. Moher

The only way we can be saved—I am afraid it will not happen in time for us—is that on account of the reduced price, 1/8d. per gallon for commercial milk, the British may reduce their dairy herd. I think that the time is too short to have that happen to a sufficient degree to save us here. I fear—I regret very much to say so—that we will be again on the scurry. We will again be scurrying next year for this particular milk product.

Mr. Dillon

Is it not a great blessing that we are not in the position of having only Jersey cows?

Mr. Moher

That is part of the defeatism which was preached away back long ago. The reason you said that now and why your predecessors said the same thing was because it would be impossible, now that you have fallen out of the race so long ago, to grade yourself up——

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy will please use the third person.

Mr. Moher

——to become a competitor in the world market for dairy produce. That is the embarrassing position we find ourselves in now.

Mr. Dillon

How can we compete against millions of pounds of surplus butter which the American Government want to give away?

Mr. Moher

The New Zealander has found a market for his butter.

Mr. Dillon

That is not my information.

Mr. Moher

Has the Minister some information that there is a surplus of New Zealand butter in cold store?

Mr. Dillon

A surplus of butter in the world.

Mr. Moher

I am speaking of the market in which we would hope to sell our dairy produce.

Mr. Dillon

What market is that?

Mr. Moher

The British market. There is no use saying "Oh". We owe nothing to the British. We are proportionately for our size one of their best customers and we make no apology whatever if we ask them to reciprocate with us.

Mr. Dillon

I thought we used to thank God that the British market was gone forever.

Mr. Moher

That is all right down the country.

Mr. Dillon

You used to call me a West Briton for trying to get the British market. Is not that true?

Mr. Moher

I never called the Minister a West Briton. I referred to the grass factor. I propose to deal with grass and to quote the opinion of a neutral again in this particular instance. It is a Mr. Holmes who came here at the invitation of the present Minister. He said:

"The best land in the country is growing physically as little as it is possible for it to grow under an Irish sky."

Mr. Dillon

Hear, hear! That was the case in 1948.

Mr. Moher

Every day of the week we see advertisements in the various newspapers exhorting the farmers to use more phosphates and use more ground limestone. The most peculiar thing is that we never see an advertisement saying you will not get an economic return from the use of phosphate or the use of ground limestone when you spread it over couch, bent, Yorkshire fog, gabhal luachair and aiteann Gaedhealach and any of the other wretched grasses you see all over the country. Side by side with that propaganda of spreading more phosphate and more ground limestone and having the land tested, why do we not have some propaganda advertisement pointing out to our farmers how futile it is for them to expect a profitable return from the use of either ground limestone or phosphates on those wretched grasses?

I am sure the Minister is aware, as a man who travels from the West to Dublin, from looking at our fields, that one could not see a profit accruing from the spreading of manures or ground limestone on some of the land. I know myself—it is a common practice in answer to these propaganda advertisements—that we have farmers, smallholders of 50 acres and under, who say they will lime half their farms this year and lime the other half next year. That is all the result of being misguided by the propaganda advertisements of the Department of Agriculture.

The Minister is aware, and the House is aware, that if you adopt that peculiar system and if you till a quota proportionate to the size of your farm, well, on a small farm you pass from one field to another quickly, and if you do any reasonable amount of tillage you turn the lime down altogether. Would it not be logical and sensible for the Department of Agriculture to advise the farmers to till in order to replace worn-out pastures——

Mr. Dillon

One more cow, one more sow and one more acre under the plough.

Mr. Moher

——put in the new grass and then come along and distribute the phosphate and the ground limestone? Then and only then can the farmer be assured of an economic return from the use of ground limestone and phosphates and other manures. Oftentimes, when a speaker attempts a comparison between Ireland and New Zealand, people will throw up their hands and say: "Oh, they have a better climate." It is admitted that they have a more uniform climate but I have asserted over and over again that potentially we have one of the finest climates in the world for the production of grass——

Mr. Dillon

Hear, hear!

Mr. Moher

——as part of a sensible rotation in which you would have a rotation of roots and cereals. In his book Holmes said of the soil of New Zealand:—

"The soils for the most part are poor, light sands or gravels or stiff clay, deficient in lime and phosphate. Their fertile seeming surface is due to hard soil and scientific treatment by which the farmers have sought to improve them."

That gives a fair comparison of the soil on which the New Zealander has made such remarkable progress.

We have done very little here on this question of grass, and anything that has been done has been done by an outside body, the Grasslands Society. We have not made a study of this very important factor, the production of cheap and plentiful grass which is a very big factor in reducing our production costs. We have lagged behind, and until we address ourselves to this basic problem we will feel the weather in competition as regards any product produced from grass. I have said over and over again that except for the introduction of the machine we have made very little progress. There has been no revolution in Irish agricultural technique in the last 50 years, and we have made no progress comparable to our opposite numbers elsewhere.

There is always concentration on where the dairyman fails, but why not concentrate on where the beef producer has failed? He seems to have escaped the whole time. He seems to have been very much riding at ease down through the years on the back of the unfortunate dairyman, who has been his pack mule. Our whole dairying economy has been geared in favour of the beef producer. It is all very well to quote a figure for the price of store cattle but take it over a previous period, over a number of years, and find exactly what the position of the dairyman as a producer of cheap stores for the beef trade has been. Somebody has computed a figure—there might be a more recent one—in relation to the return for a unit of food that is fed to a dairy cow to a unit of food fed to a beef animal. It has been: beef, 1.2d.; milk, 2d. That is a factor, and there is one thing that I want to say now before I forget it—we have been accused in the dairying area of incompetence, but surely——

Mr. Dillon

Who accused you of incompetence?

Mr. Moher

I did not say the Minister. There is no need for the Minister to challenge me. I have not accused the Minister of it; but various vested interests have accused the dairying industry of being incompetent—vested interests in beef. There is far more incompetence in this country in the production of beef. The Minister is aware that on the average it takes us in this country 12 months longer to produce mature beef than it does those people who produce beef as it should be produced.

Mr. Dillon

I deny that absolutely.

Mr. Moher

It is a statement which I am prepared to stand over, and if the Minister would get officers of his Department to examine what the average age of the mature animal exported is here I am afraid he would alter his opinion.

I say, again, that there is no logical reason why our function should be to produce a by-product in our dairying industry in the supply of a store to the beef animal. Why should not something be done? Why does not the beef man try to produce? We are all aware that the grass lands and the grazing lands have for the past few years been completely understocked. Do we not know that the beef barons of two or three years ago are now slowly but surely becoming the wheat and beet barons of last year and this year?

Mr. Dillon

They are becoming the wheat barons now.

Mr. Moher

Yes. I was thoroughly amazed at some of the grazing lands that I saw ploughed up under wheat.

Mr. Dillon

Hear, hear!

Mr. Moher

That is sensible and logical. Any sane person—and the Minister did not always hold that view —would know that a logical rotation in a grazing area should be grain and grass. Those people should try to fill the gap. I have said earlier that our cow population has remained static, and we can only increase the number of our store cattle by reducing the mortality rate in calves, but there is still a big gap to be filled to supply the grazing counties with an adequate number of stores if we are to develop a sound and solid beef export trade. I say that it is very much their job to get both, and to produce the pure beef calf suckling the beef cow, and then the whole dispute of beef versus milk resolves itself into this, that this dispute will not come to be settled in the dairying counties of the South but the ultimate solution will be found as a result of that in the beef counties of the flat lands and midlands.

It would not be logical for me, having spoken so long about cows, not to say something about the scheme which is to be introduced for the tuberculin testing of cows. I hope that it will make rapid success. It is imperative for us to proceed as fast in this matter as we possibly can. Again I say that the lash has been held over us. Possibly we would not have moved even now were it not for the fact that in Great Britain, where around 40 per cent. of their cattle are now T.B. tested, there has been erected against us a cordon sanitaire, an area into which no Irish store may enter. As they increase this cordon the area, for the Irish store will be reduced pro rata; and it is imperative that the Minister and the section of his Department dealing with it in co-operation with every section of the community should proceed with all speed in the eradication of bovine tuberculosis in the area scheduled by the Department.

I want to say this much. There is something missing. There is a prerequisite, preparatory work that should be done which has been missing because I think very much—no, I am accusing nobody; the Minister's accusing finger is in the wrong direction— I think that a prerequisite to the bovine tuberculin testing of cattle is first of all a decent cowshed on every farm. It is no use removing one set of infected animals and replacing them with tuberculin tested cattle, if they are to be sent back again into the miserable shacks from which the reactors were removed to be reinfected. There is one point in that connection which I want to stress. It is that there is something illogical about the whole thing. Again, we have started at the wrong end, because I maintain that we have in our dairy herds all over the country thousands of cows which, on the law of economics, should long ago have been eliminated. Now we are starting to eliminate these animals, not because they are pensioners, but because they might react in a tuberculin test.

Another point which I want to bring to the notice of the Minister is the grant system operated in respect of farm buildings. The Minister is aware that a condition attaching to qualification for a grant for any house, cowbyre included, is that a considerable capital outlay on the erection of the house must be undertaken by the person about to qualify for the grant. The Minister must also remember that most of our dairy men are small holders and the people who have mainly availed of the grants are people with strong bank accounts.

If the Minister will make a tour of the dairy areas of the South, he will discover that all these small people still have the same shacks, and I suggest that that scheme be revised, particularly the scheme in relation to cow-byres and that the Minister should make sure that, on a valuation basis, the small man will get preferential treatment over the man with the higher valuation. That is only logical and a reasonable prequisite, if we want to get rid of the wretched shacks in which many of our cows all over the country are housed. I have put a view to the House in relation to cattle. It may not be the Fianna Fáil view, but it is my view, the view possibly of a minority, but expressed by a good many people, a number which I believe is growing year by year.

We come now to pigs and again we are very much in the position of the Pied Piper of Hamelin in this regard. If the Minister will go into any pig fair and walk from one crib to another, all he need to do to give a description of what he sees is to change the word rat in the Pied Piper of Hamelin. They are all there—the small ones and the tawny ones. There was no uniformity, in spite of what the Minister may say about the Large York. Very little has been done by the Department of Agriculture in relation to the pigs in comparison with what has been done by our competitors elsewhere. I know one thing that has been done—there has been race segregation in relation to pigs. A colour bar was enforced when it came to dealing with pigs, but the Minister and the House are aware that, in respect of a particular commodity which might have been acceptable yesterday, there is a complete change to-day. We live in a world of change and that applies to taste in food, and to-day one thing we do know is that no one now wants excessive fat. We seem to suffer from acidosis, dyspepsia and all the other peculiar stomach ailments attaching to excessive fat. I cannot look at the thing myself and generally nobody wants excessive fat, so that the farmer must gear his unit of production just the same as the manufacturer to satisfy the needs of his customers.

I say that we have not done that in our pig production. When the British housewife years ago said that she did not want our fat bacon, our attitude here was very much the attitude: "If you do not take it, you can keep on slimming." We did nothing about it, but we know that as far back as 1906 the Danes started to improve their production in an effort to satisfy their main customer, the British housewife, and we know what happened. It is a slow process, involving scientific application and study of genetics, to alter the conformation of any animal, and so the Danes started their pig-testing stations. We are only starting now, while the Danes started theirs away back in 1906, and it is on record that, between the years 1926 and 1936, they were able to increase the average length of sides of bacon to the bacon factories by approximately two inches. If I were to put down a question asking the Minister what was the average length of an Irish side of bacon, he would have considerable difficulty in providing me with the answer.

Mr. Dillon

Oh, no; indeed he would not—and he could tell you how many ribs were in the side.

Mr. Moher

There is a dispute as to the number of ribs—it is very much an Adam and Eve affair.

Mr. Dillon

Not in the Irish Department of Agriculture. We are counting them every week.

Mr. Moher

We could, I suggest to the Minister, as a person interested in pigs, reduce our fat by a simple method. It would be what one might call an emergency provision. Age is a big factor in the production of fat and pigs. Like politicians, they seem to put on a disproportionate amount of fat as they grow older, but we could effect a considerable improvement, it is my belief, if we were to encourage the marketing of our pigs at a younger age, when the animals have far less proportion of fat than the older animals. We know that the average age of a Danish pig going into the factory is something like 180 days. I have no figures but, from observation, I think the average age of Irish pigs going to the market would be much higher than that. Perhaps I am wrong in that.

Mr. Dillon

You are wrong.

Mr. Moher

Perhaps I could be shown to be wrong if the figure is available, but if we concentrated on trying to get our pigs marketed at a younger age, we would considerably reduce the fat content, but then something would happen, because to get the same gross tonnage of bacon produced, we would have to increase breeding——

Mr. Dillon

One more cow; one more sow; and one more acre under the plough.

Mr. Moher

——and increased breeding would mean that we would considerably increase the production cost. It is logical that, if you have to produce a greater number of finished pigs to get that same gross weight, there will be an increase in cost. I will pass on from pigs, and I am not going to say much about the old hen.

Mr. Dillon

I would like to hear you on the 1/3 a dozen for eggs.

Mr. Moher

I will talk about it in a minute. I am one of those people who have always believed that there were very few old hens that did not die in debt. The average farmer's wife always talked about the profit from poultry when she could get the bucket and go to the oats loft, but when it came to feeding the fowl out of the miller's bag it was different. The Minister may still say he has a problem, but he stalked the country with that old hen which he used to say was worth more than a Fianna Fáil calf. I heard him at every fair in the country, but I am afraid now that for future election campaigns the political hen has died of political cocksadosis.

Mr. Donegan

Everybody in this country must live on a profit and as the main sources of national wealth of which we are possessed are those that come from the production of beef and livestock and from the production of cereals, it is a matter of prime importance that we decrease as far as we can the production costs in these industries.

In regard to cereals, I am not satisfied that for some years past the costs of production have been lowered to the level to which it should be possible to lower them. In particular, I refer to the production of wheat. The all important factor in the production of wheat is the supply of fertilisers at a cheap price. It is interesting to see that in 1947 before the advent of the inter-Party Government, the average yield of wheat per statute acre was 10.8 cwts. and that after three years in which Deputy Dillon, as Minister for Agriculture, advocated the use of fertilisers to a great degree by advertisement and by his utterances, the average amount of wheat produced per statute acre in 1953 was 23.2 cwts.

The relevant figures with regard to the importation of fertilisers are that in 1947 £1,000,000 worth of fertilisers was imported, and that in 1951 £3,700,000 worth was imported. In 1952, the figure was reduced to £2,900,000 and no figures are available for 1953. I move to report progress.

Progress reported.