I think I made it clear that it is now pretty generally agreed that the economic future of us all, whether we live in city, town, or village or on the land itself is, in the last analysis, dependent on the success or failure which attends our efforts to expand production from the land. It is most urgently necessary for everyone in this House, and in the country, to bear in mind one factor in relation to the expansion of agricultural production that does not as yet apply to the expansion in our industrial industry and it is that our domestic potential for consumption, though very much expanded, has now almost reached its limit with the result that increased agricultural production, in the main, must be for export.
A great many people over the last 17 years have become so accustomed to living in a seller's market that they forget, or are prone to forget, the fundamental change that is introduced when we find ourselves in these times in a buyer's market. We are back once more in the atmosphere of pretty acute competition in the foreign markets in which we trade. Fortunately we have been able by a series of trade agreements, principally with Great Britain, substantially to mitigate the severity of the impact of that competitive atmosphere; but, more and more as it impacts on us, our success or failure to expand production here will depend on our ability to expand it on terms which will enable us to meet competition, and beat it, both as to quality and price in the markets where we trade.
Bearing that in mind, I do not think we can doubt that the future of expansion lies mainly, but not exclusively, in the realm of live stock and live-stock products. I have indicated how urgently necessary it is that we should increase our cow population. One of the most remarkable phenomena of Irish agriculture over the past century has been that, though the total number of cattle has fluctuated quite widely from time to time, our total number of cows and heifers has remained virtually stable; and nothing is more urgent in our present situation than that we should exert every effort to increase our cow population.
Now, when it comes down to the concrete question of how this is to be done, I have a pragmatical mind: it seems to me the only way to do it is to keep more cows, and the only way to keep more cows is to try to persuade our farmers to retain more of the heifers bred on their holdings and send them to the bull. One may ask not unnaturally why they have not done that in the past and I think, when one comes to examine that question, one is forced to the conclusion that one of the reasons is that, while our farmers are pretty well as good as any farmers in the world in respect of tillage techniques, it is undoubtedly true that we have fallen far behind in a proper appreciation of the capacity of grassland to produce, with the result that the quality of much of our grazing land and meadows is deplorably low.
This leads me then to ask the question as to how best that problem can be surmounted? I think we are providing the answer to that problem reasonably well, but it behoves us to persuade the farmers to avail more energetically of the facilities which are being afforded them now and which were not available to them in the past. Those facilities may be numbered as, first, the supply of ground limestone which is an essential prerequisite to improving our grasslands; and it is important to remember that we now have available unlimited supplies of ground limestone at a price which brings it within reach of every farmer who is prepared to use it. The second thing that is urgently necessary is that the farmer should know what essential constituents his land lacks in order to evoke its maximum output and, to do that, soil testing facilities are essential.
It is satisfactory to know now that we have at Johnstown Castle in County Wexford a soil testing laboratory second to none in Europe or, indeed, I believe, in the world, the facilities of which are available to the farmers on more advantageous terms than are such facilities available to any other farmers in the world, because our farmers need only ask the agricultural instructor or the parish agent to come and test their soil and that will be done free of charge and a report made, without any cost of any kind, as to what the particular farms may require.
There is no doubt that at the present time what the grassland of Ireland first requires is an adequate supply of lime, phosphate, potash and nitrogen; and it is the duty of the Department of Agriculture, as it is of the county committees, to direct the attention of the farmers to the necessity for these things and to their availability. I think it would be of service to the agricultural community if all of us who have an opportunity of reaching that community directly would emphasise to those who are habitually taking conacre at the present time for the accommodation of their surplus stock that if they would spend one half the rent they at present happily pay for conacre on the purchase of lime, phosphate, potash and nitrogen and apply them to their own land, they would be able to carry their cattle on their own land, and, at the same time, by a process of residual values, they would greatly improve the quality of their own land, thus fulfilling the injunction of getting from it its maximum output, always provided they leave it in the autumn a little better than they found it in the spring.
It is true that a great deal of the land of the country has been in a state of chronic dereliction through waterlogging and excessive fencing, through the occupation of too much land by shrubs and ditches, through the overgrowth of much land by scrub and bush and rock. I think the land rehabilitation project is making good headway towards the elimination of these obstacles, thereby increasing production. Now, all this is primarily referable to the increased output of cattle and milk, but we must not overlook, as some of us are too often prone to do, the very important contribution that can and should be made to the economy of our small farmers and medium sized farmers by the keeping of greater numbers of sheep. I am happy to see from the returns that the numbers of our sheep are steadily increasing and I like to recall that very energetic measures were taken over the past eight years by the Department of Agriculture to improve the quality of our mountain sheep by the introduction of very large numbers of imported rams of the highest quality, the results of which imports are now being seen in the quality of the wool and of the character of the blackfaced sheep on our mountainsides and indeed on the sheep which normally are reared and fattened on the lowlands as well.
We are unfortunately late in starting in the eradication of bovine T.B. By a series of circumstances into which it is not necessary to go to-day, it has been possible for Denmark and Holland to travel further and faster in that direction than we have been able to do. There is no use in pining over the past. We put our hand to the task of eliminating bovine T.B. in this country when the bovine eradication scheme was launched a little over a year ago. I think we may justly claim to have found ourselves much more fortunate than we had any right to anticipate.
We took, as the House knows, three areas for intensive eradication—County Sligo, County Clare and the parish of Bansha and two adjoining parishes. The incidence of the disease in the Bansha area was much what we anticipated and was undoubtedly high. The incidence in Clare was not alarming but substantial and it manifestly presented a relatively long-term problem for its complete eradication. Our experience in Sligo, however, has been so encouraging as to persuade us that it is not impossible that, within the next year or two, we shall be able to designate Sligo as the first T.B. free area in this country. It is our purpose, when we have reached that stage, to require everybody in the area to participate in the task of eradicating T.B. just as we would require them to eradicate anthrax and foot-and-mouth disease, if it appeared in any part of the country; and then, by the erection of a cordon sanitaire around Sligo, gradually to expand to the adjoining counties a T.B. free status so that, within the foreseeable future, we may have a substantial area in that part of the country which shall be eligible for the style and title of an attested area under the terminology commonly employed in international practice in the elimination of T.B.
An essential part of that scheme for the elimination of bovine T.B. is the facilities which are being made available to co-operative creameries to install pasteurising plants to handle the skim milk which is being returned to the farmers. I am happy to say that advantage is being taken of the 50 per cent. grant that is available to those who install the plant, and we hope that every creamery in the bovine eradication area will have that equipment in the early future. I think it is true to say that, in respect of the entire County Clare, all the creameries have it or are in the process of acquiring it, and I hope that we shall be able to make a similar report in respect of Sligo at a reasonably early date.
The next item in our expansion programme must be pigs. Over a short term, pigs have the greatest potentiality for dramatic expansion because you can expand the pig population very much more quickly than that of cattle or sheep. When one came to ask oneself what required to be done in order to bring this about, it seemed to me that the first essential was to ensure, as far as our resources would permit, that that hazard in pig production, which has operated always heretofore to restrain full scale expansion, would be removed. And that hazard was the danger that, when the number of pigs increased, the prices would collapse. Bitter experience in the past persuaded those who produced pigs that that habitually happened and, accordingly, the Government has authorised me to inform pig producers that for the next 12 months—and we intend to maintain it thereafter—there shall be a minimum guaranteed price for pigs of Grade A quality delivered to bacon factories.
It may be well if I make it clear what that provides. It provides that every pig going into the factory shall be graded under the supervision of the officers of the Department of Agriculture who normally attend there for veterinary inspection purposes. Over and above that any farmer has a right to go and see his own pigs graded if he wants to. In respect of any pig which attains to Grade A, he is guaranteed that he will receive not less than 235/- per cwt., no matter how many pigs are delivered to the factory. He may receive more but nobody can offer him less.
A constant source of complaint has been that it is a terrible hardship on a man, who delivers a pair of pigs to the factory and discovers that they are 1 or 2 lb. overweight; he is heavily cut and his pigs reduced from the relatively satisfactory price provided for Grade A pigs down to the relatively unsatisfactory price provided for Grade B pigs. I have tried to meet that situation, and the way I have tried to meet it is by establishing a new buffer grade. Grade A pigs will be pigs from 1 cwt. O qr. 8 lb. up to 1 cwt. 2 qr. O lb., with certain fat measurements which are set out in the Order, and anybody delivering pigs within that definition is guaranteed not less than 235/- per cwt.
Then I have asked the bacon curers to produce what I call a buffer grade —Grade B1. For pigs with those fat measurements but which fall within the range of 1 cwt. 2 qr. 1 lb. or 1 cwt. 2 qr. 7 lb., they will receive 230/-. If the pig falls into Grade B ordinary, I do not seek to fix the price at all, and the same applies in the case of Grade C and what is called Grade X, if it falls below the very minimal standard fixed for Grade C. I think that will be some contribution to the problem of the man who feels a deep sense of grievance if his pig has gone 1 lb. or 2 lbs. over the maximum prescribed for Grade A, as a result of which he is called upon to bear the full impact of the reduction which, we may anticipate, would arise as between Grade A and Grade B pigs.
At the same time, as from May 1st, there will be no restriction on the export of live pigs. Deputies may ask me: "What do you expect the result of that will be?" I would like to say that I do not know. Some pig dealers take the view that they will be able to build up a large market for live pigs, and the view has also been expressed to me that they will find it very difficult. However, it is a free open market and those engaged in it can make the best fist of it they can. I shall be very glad to see them export as many pigs as they can find profitable markets for, and I will be very glad to see the advantages of that accruing to the farmers who produce the pigs. I do not know what contribution that is going to make to stability but this, at least, seems certain: it will be an additional guarantee of assistance to the prices generally available for pigs of all grades if there is an alternative market available for them through pig export channels.
That brings me to a problem which confounds the mind of many people and that is whether we have the best type of pig in this country or not. That is one of the most difficult of all the questions to answer because you are in this position. The type of pig we have in this country is intimately familiar to us all. It is as old as human wisdom that distant hills look green and far off cows have long horns. Anything you do not know and that some other fellow has looks lovely, but the thing you have yourself you are always inclined to regard as rather pedestrian.
There is another element that a lot of people forget. It is that the man who has the new thing is in on the ground floor and the louder he toots his horn about the virtue of the new thing of which he is exclusive possessor for the time being, the higher he can jack the price to anybody who wants to purchase half of his output. Deputies have probably noticed that in Great Britain two or three years ago the fortunate few who bought first drafts of the Swedish landrace pigs got the most incredible prices for sows from people who were eager to share in this bonanza. The price has gone back considerably now, but over and above that those who rushed in to participate in the bonanza were not aware that they were buying something more than the pig. A great many of them were buying a risk and our friends in Northern Ireland who admitted the Swedish landrace pig in the early stages discovered to their horror and dismay that there had turned up in Northern Ireland that which had never been there before—a most obscure and dangerous pig disease from which this island had been free up to that.
Fortunately, by diligent exertions on the part of our friends in Northern Ireland they have pretty well succeeded in stamping out the disease of atrophic rhinitis, an outbreak of which threatened them there. I am being pressed to throw open the gates and let in the landrace pig, the representation being that the landrace is so much better than the strain of pigs we have. I do not believe it is. I believe there are good Swedish landrace pigs just the same as there are bad ones, just as I believe there are good large Irish pigs and bad ones. Even if I make the concession that the generality of landrace pigs has possibly reached a higher level at this stage than the generality of large Irish white, I am convinced that it would be folly to run the risk of bringing in something which will attack our pigs for whatever passing advantage there might be available in having a limited number of Swedish landrace pigs at fancy prices available to our farmers at the present time.
But I could not honestly take up that position if I were not in a position to add that we are pursuing with all the energy we can command the task of progeny testing and raising the standard by a process of selection of our own large Irish white pigs. We have inaugurated progeny testing in an experimental way at Ballyhaise and a progeny testing station where progeny testing can be done by the best possible methods is in process of erection at the Munster institute.
That is not all. In addition to that, we have, with the collaboration of the Pigs and Bacon Marketing Board, set up a system in every factory whereby a constant watch is maintained to see if any exceptionally high proportion of Grade A pigs is coming from any particular district and wherever that becomes manifest we send an investigation officer to that district to see if we could identify the boar which is passing on this peculiarly desirable factor in the progeny that is taken up in the factory. So far, these efforts have been attended by some measure of success. Where we establish that a particular boar seems to be producing an exceptionally high proportion of high quality progeny we are endeavouring to use his progeny as boars to let out or to sell to other breeders so that the excellence of his produce can be disseminated as widely as possible.
That procedure is attended by its own perils because sometimes when you establish the desirable quality of a boar either at a progeny testing station or through this procedure in the factory by the time you get to the boar he has been turned into sausages or has met with some disaster. We had one instance in which we thought we had identified a boar but by the time we reached his residence the boar was dead. He had met with an accident. That happens from time to time.
Nevertheless, you do identify a number of them and it is along those lines that I would hope to establish in due time that the large Irish white would produce at least as high a percentage of Grade A pigs as would suit our export trade and provide our bacon factories with as high quality a pig as is available to a bacon factory in any part of the world.
That does not finish the job because when our farmers have delivered to the factories the highest grade pig the quality of the bacon depends upon the skill of the curer who produces the bacon. We have in this country some curers who are as good curers as can be found anywhere but we have some curers who are not. It was a source of constant difficulty and anxiety to me how best to deal with the curer who is getting the right quality of pigs all right but who is not producing the right quality of bacon and who by putting inadequately cured bacon on the British market may do serious injury to the reputation of Irish bacon as a whole.
I have felt bound, therefore, to set high standards and high accommodation and equipment in Irish bacon factories as the minimum that will be accepted in regard to bacon curing in future. I have got to bear in mind what will be reasonable requests on established firms so as not to present them with a programme of re-equipment and reform which if enforced ruthlessly would wreck them financially but I have got to give notice and make it perfectly clear that in the defence of the agricultural industry as a whole I must ensure that reasonable accommodation is available in bacon factories to do justice to the pigs that are slaughtered and cured there and that people who have not got the resources themselves must seek the resources, not to carry out any fancy or unnecessary frills in the equipment of factories, but to bring these factories up to the minimum requirements of modern bacon curing. We cannot all try to produce bacon in factories equipped in a style that was appropriate to 1880, and sell the product in a market which is being supplied in 1956 from the four corners of the earth.
I spoke of the knowledge we now have of the relative merits of our own breed of large Irish white pig. I think it may be of interest to the House to have some information which I give them most tentatively and under every sort of warning that the conditions under which these progeny tests were carried out are experimental and could not be deemed to be identical with the conditions obtaining in progeny testing stations recognised internationally, as our new progeny testing station at the Munster Institute will be when it is built. But, subject to those emphatic reservations, we have conducted and completed two progeny tests to-day. Another, the third, is in process of completion at the present time.
In the first test, there were 74 pigs on test and in the second, 71. The average weight of the pigs at eight weeks was 34.67 lb. in the first case and 36.75 in the second. The average weight at slaughter in the first test was 193 lb. and in the second 190. The food conversion rate, which is a very important factor, and this not at all under ideal conditions, was 3,369 in the first case and 3.502 in the second. The killing out percentage was 75.57 in the first test and 76.93 in the second test. The length of carcase, measured according to the Danish system —and there are two systems— averaged 93.5 centimetres in the first test and 94 centimetres in the second test. These are figures that I have compared at length and they compare very favourably with the Danish figures. There are a number of other criteria here set out by which carcases are judged but, when you bring them down to the point of grading, we have had this not unsatisfactory experience. In the first progeny test 67.5 per cent. of the pigs graded A; in the second progeny test 76.3 per cent of the pigs graded A. In the first progeny test, 23 per cent. of the pigs graded B; in the second progeny test 16.6 per cent. of the pigs graded B. In the first test only 9.5 per cent. were graded C; in the second test only 7.1 per cent. graded C. That means that, in the first test, we had over 90 per cent. of the pigs grading A and B and in the second test we had nearly 93 per cent. of the pigs grading A or B. That is by no means perfection, but it is not at all bad. I think it would be a ridiculous procedure to throw away the position we have, that is, of having a population of that breed free from very grave disease and exchanging it for the Swedish landrace which certainly, in our opinion, is a vector of atrophic rhinitis and which we very much doubt will produce a result substantially superior to that result as of to-day.
