When I reported progress last night, we had begun to discuss the situation in relation to grain. Everybody who knows anything about agriculture will agree that we want a high level of grain as well as a high cattle population, that one can run with the other, that the farm with a high level of grain can also have a high population of cattle, that you will not get a proportionate increase in the number of cattle that can be maintained in each year if you drop the grain acreage.
The grain acreage last year dropped, as a result, in my submission, of the bad management of the Minister for Agriculture, by 6.4 per cent. Worse than that, the highest priced grain that we in this country sell is wheat. It is high priced because, presumably, it is charged in to the industrial wage structure to produce a price for flour for home consumption. There was a reduction of 26.3 per cent in the acreage in the wheat, or 82,700 acres.
Let us consider what Fianna Fáil said about a similar reduction in wheat-growing in the days gone by. I quote from the front page of the Sunday Press of 23rd October, 1955, when the late Deputy Tom Walsh produced an article which got banner headlines: “Wheat, beet, potatoes incentive has gone. The drop in wheat production of 100,000 tons in last year represents a loss of about £2,800,000 to wheat growers.” The present position is that we have a greater drop than that. It is logical for me to say now to the Minister of Agriculture that the incentive is gone and that there has been a loss to the farmers of up to £3 million in respect of the reduction in the acreage of wheat. Let us add to that the fact that potatoes at the moment are virtually unsaleable. The position may have improved in the past few weeks but during the entire harvesting period, they have sold at not as much as would provide the cost of harvesting much less the high cost of sowing, spraying and generally maintaining the crop in the ground.
If I say the Minister for Agriculture is responsible for this reduction, it is only fair that I should give my reasoning.Before the 1962 harvest, the Minister lauded the fact that there had been discussion, and to some extent agreement, with the millers in relation to wheat and between the millers and the farmers' organisations. While they did get together and while they did set up the Central Cereal Laboratory, I want to make it quite clear that the responsibility still devolves on the Minister for Agriculture to see to it that the wheat farmer or producer of any sort of agricultural produce gets the highest price possible for the greatest amount of his goods.
I submit that the Minister in doing as he did and said he would do, wiping his hands completely of this issue, created the situation in the harvest of 1962 where the results of this Central Cereal Laboratory were followed strictly and rigidly with too high a rejection rate in 1962. I do not submit that the wheat grown in 1962 was 100 per cent fit for milling but I do submit that a greater proportion could have been used for flour. As a result, the low price that pertained, even though the Government did give some little help, meant that the farmer was so disappointed with what he received that he sowed 82,700 acres less at a loss of about £25 an acre. If we take the old rule of thumb measure of one ton to a statute acre and the price at £3 a barrel, it means a loss of about £25 an acre. The Minister, in wiping his hands of the whole operation, left the farmer in the position that he reduced his sowing of high-priced grain by 82,700 acres or 26.3 per cent.
The Minister had an agreement in relation to grain whereby he gave to a particular group the right to import all the offals free of any binding clause and also to import 180,000 tons of coarse grain. In return, they undertook to take up the barley crop. All that is passed now and I do not propose to go into the rights or wrongs, but it is wrong that this situation should exist as it did. It was only the views of people who matter in the agricultural industry that caused the Minister to change the position this year. When he did change it, he created a situation in which An Board Gráin are charged with the taking over of the barley crop but what will happen on 1st January is that they will not get that much of it because a great measure will by then be taken over by other interests. Pollard imports and wheat offal imports mounted to an extraordinary degree in the past three months.
The Minister had not placed restrictions on the import of Russian offals up to 31st March next and as a result of inordinate importation, the price of Irish pollard has fallen. I know the idea is that the farmer is entitled to get his feeding stuffs at world prices but I deliberately use the words "inordinate imports" at low prices in this connection. This is the reason the price of Irish flour has increased and the price of Irish offals has decreased.
It was a Fianna Fáil Government who, in 1953, set up an inter-departmental committee that produced a figure of 300,000 tons of Irish wheat to be grown each year. Due to the mismanagement of the Minister and the Government, that figure has now fallen to 265,000 tons and the slipshod methods of the Minister over the past few years have resulted in a situation in which that figure could be further reduced. Our policy here is to use the maximum quantity of Irish wheat and it will be the policy of the Fine Gael Government, when they attain office, to make every effort to see that the maximum quantity of Irish wheat is included in the grist.
To say that we should have a 100 per cent Irish wheat loaf is saying something that is wrong because we have good years and bad years, but when you reduce the quantity of Irish wheat in the loaf below 75 per cent, it should be possible also to drop your quality standards and allow the Irish farmer to benefit from increased industrial wages and to sell his produce at a price which will be charged to the Irish consumer in the price of the loaf.
We believe that there is a necessity for a relatively small sum in subsidisation of the transport of barley from places such as East Cork, where they have a surplus, to the feeding areas in the west of Ireland and in Monaghan and Cavan, so that the farmer in these areas will not have to pay too high a price for his compound feeding stuffs. The Minister, in not facing up to that matter, has let down the farmers and a change would not be out of place.
The position in relation to horticultural products has come to the fore over the past 12 or 18 months. In this connection, one must immediately consider the efforts of Lt.-General Costello to process Irish vegetables by the accelerated freeze dry system and to market them in Britain and on overseas markets. There is a feeling growing up in the country over the past few months that things are not going as they should go and that the grandiose statements made up to that time have had a brake put on them as far as the Government are concerned.
It has come to the point that we had in the Farmers' Journal of 19th October a cartoon by that very clever artist, Warner, in which we had vege-table factories being put up as a poster show on the right and another poster being put up across that by a person very like the Minister. In another corner, there is a person carrying something very like a crozier and in another corner we have a person like Lt.-General Costello smoking his pipe as usual and smiling at the whole business.
We want to know what the Government intend to do about these factories and we want to know why a grant was refused to the Glencolumbkille Co-operative in County Donegal. What was the speech made by a member of the Hierarchy as a result of which there were consultations with the Taoiseach and the Minister as a further result of which a certain undertaking was given? Is it true that a grant has been given for the setting up of a small, one-unit, experimental factory which will not use Irish vegetables? If that is so, what is the purpose of the whole operation?
We do not know on this side of the House, but we know this much, that the quota figure for the amount of labour on the farm is seven hours in relation to those projects for every hour in the factory. A figure has been mentioned also of 240 people employed in each factory. We know that the figures in relation to the expenditure involved when presented in the public press compare far better than with some of the industrial efforts—I should say solely industrial efforts—using no farm produce that is available in large quantity in this country and produced by Irish hands—which have the enthusiastic support of the Government.
There is also in relation to these horticultural products the fact that we on the east coast are right opposite the north-western ports of Britain. We have Manchester, Liverpool, Bradford and all those cities where there is a standing market for fresh vegetables. In Drogheda town during the last winter, an ordinary citizen who happened to have a contact through marriage in Manchester exported in containers sizeable quantities of vegetables—carrots, parsnips, and even cabbage—to those markets, and paid higher prices to the farmers than had been obtaining up to that time.
Within three miles of where I live, there is a Dutchman who every day at six o'clock in the morning rings up the various markets in Manchester, Belfast and even in Dublin. Before 10 o'clock, his lorry has left for where the best prices are. He can sell his carrots, his brussels sprouts, his celery and his parsnips and other vegetables at enhanced prices, live well and have a figure of between 50 and 100 acres in this production and a higher level of employment per acre than I have seen anywhere else in the country. If this is possible, I asked the Minister if he was wide awake as to the cost of transferring from eastern ports here to the north west of Britain this sort of vegetable but I could not be answered. The packing was so different and there were all those variations so that he could not indicate the cost of transfer.
The complaint at the moment is that there is too high a cost of transport. If the Minister wants a figure, I will quote as high as £7 a ton for some of these commodities. I want to ask the Minister if there is an answer to that, whether there should be an effort to have some service, perhaps subsidised in the initial years, to give a volume of goods which would mean a reduced cost of transport and a market for our farmers which is not now available to them. These are things which perhaps should be done and are not being done.
I asked the Minister on Tuesday, 12th November, what capital was invested in the past five years by commercial interests and co-operative societies in undertakings to process, pack or market agricultural products. The answer he gave me was that the information requested was not available.I wonder if I asked the same sort of question of the Minister for Industry and Commerce or the Taoiseach in respect of purely industrial undertakings, would they say that that information was not available? I submit it would be readily available. The Minister has now alerted his Department as to the awareness they should have of these developments and the necessity for them. Does the world not know that more and more goods are being bought in a package and that the name on the outside signifies the standard of quality? When I began my remarks last evening, I said that constancy of supply and certainly of quality was the keynote of agricultural production. What effort is the Minister making to have this done?
The small farms of the west have been the subject of reports, but there are small farms everywhere. These horticultural products are commodities that could help wonderfully there. There are other things that could be a help. I had hoped the Minister would make his contribution this year as a result of the report produced on the small western farms and that he would have something to say about them, but he had nothing of any consequence that I could see. There were things that could have been done. One of them was something that was announced before the last inter-Party Government left office, which was legislation that we would have passed to enable small farmers who had a charge on their holdings which had been defunct or not claimed for a certain number of years to remove those charges without great legal cost, so placing them in the position of being able to go to the bank manager or to the Agricultural Credit Corporation to get a small loan. Those financial interests are not interested in a second charge because a second charge interferes with their opportunities to collect. We know that the vast amount of capital that has to be injected into agriculture will bear hardest on those in the small farms. If the Minister had announced this policy which we had decided to provide and had put it into practice, he could have helped.
If he had said that he was prepared to set up, as has happened in two places in this country already, communal pig-fattening stations from which sows of good quality could be given out to small farmers who could feed them and get them to farrow and sell back the bonhams to those communal stations at a fixed price per lb., it would have been a great help. In one instance that I know of, you can get a sow for £35 and when she has farrowed, you can come back with the bonham and get 2/- a lb. A good bonham is 50 lbs. weight so you are guaranteed a minimum of £5 per bonham. That can be continued on the second and third farrowing and you can find out if she is going to have a large number of bonhams in each litter or not, of the right sort or not, and as you must bring back the sow then, there can be culling. The bad one can be pushed aside and the good one used again, and as the mating is done with boars that are available at the communal pig-fattening stations and they are proven stock, you will get your pig quality up and the small farmer can earn good money by doing a job that cannot be done well in a big unit. There is only one big unit I know of in the British Isles where they farrow all their own sows, that is, McGuckians of Cloughmills. All the others like Jordans of Lisburn let their sows out to have them farrowed where individual attention could be given to them on small farms.
If the Minister had only said that he would do this in the west and that there would be perhaps increased grants in respect of housing for those sows, he could have done something. If he had said that he would free those holdings from the old charge of 10/- a week for the sister in America who never had claimed for 20 years, and would so allow the people to have some borrowing power, he could have done something. These are the things the Minister has not said he will do.
It is also quite true that as far as the small farmers are concerned, two businesses set up by the Leader of the Opposition when he was Minister for Agriculture, namely Eggsports and the five county co-operative which he set up for the marketing of poultry flesh, are two of the main ways in which he could give a contribution towards easing the lot of the small farmer. The small farmer who produces turkeys finds that there is a glut at Christmas. There must be somebody who could take his birds, regulate the supply, put them in cold storage and market them over a period. That is a simple thing. It is being done in malting barley and various agricultural commodities. He could be paid a minimum figure and get the balance when his goods have been marketed over a period. It is only in this way that you will get a constant balanced production. The Minister does not seem to feel that there is anything there. He has not indicated that an extension of the dairying system to the west of Ireland is contemplated by him. It is absolutely necessary to give those people a cash crop. The cash products that could assist would be the farrowing of sows from fattening stations, the production of poultry through a communal selling agency, which would give extra profits, and an extension of the dairying system, so that they could have their monthly big cheque. All this could help, but we have not got it.
We have a reduction in the number of pigs. Comparing our pig population of 1,094,500 with that of the European countries, we must admit that ours is a pretty miserable figure. The day is gone of the pig in the cot beside the cottage. The profit on rearing a pig varies from 30/- to £2. I do not know anybody who wants to feed two or three pigs over three or three and a half months for 30/- or £2. That does not pay. It is just as easy to feed 40, 50 or 100 pigs.
While grants are available, there does not seem to be the necessary drive for an extension of pig breeding and fattening. For instance, nobody has pointed out that the Jordan type of pig house is so much cheaper in capital outlay and feeding cost than anything else. No grants have been given for those. The capital cost is given as £4 per pig, whereas the Danes pay up to £28 and the Solari unit runs as high as £18.
Let us get down to the basic points of policy on which we differ from the Government. The report of the bacon industry survey recommended a levy of 5/- per pig over the next two and a half years. This money is to be used to compensate the owners of uneconomic bacon factories that have to go out of production. We have stated our mind openly on this proposal. We reject it, and if we become the Government of this country, we will not implement it. I have never heard silence speak so loud as it has from the Government side. I want the Minister to say if the Government will extract this levy of 5/- per pig.
We have grants and loans for bacon factories. We intend to extend them, but the person who receives them must naturally be responsible for their repayment.A factory owner will not take a grant or loan for a factory that is fading out. If we can get our pig production up, these people will take grant and loans in respect of viable units. If they are not viable, let us forget about them. They should not be a charge on the farmer. Surely it is not the farmer's business to compensate a businessman with a bad unit of production? We have said quite clearly we will not implement this recommendation; the Government have said nothing.
There is another proposal whereby the Pigs and Bacon Commission would buy all the pigs. We have no objection to this, but we think it would be a mistake and an interruption of free trade if pig dealers were to be excluded from getting a little more. My own experience is that the pig dealer can often give more than you would get for a grade A pig going to the factory. The reason is obvious. Our pork trade with Britain has improved year by year and pigs for pork very often make more than pigs for bacon. I do not like the situation whereby the big business man will pay the minimum for all the pigs. It is clear to anyone who ever saw a pig being graded that the fat difference between grade A and a lower grade is the breadth of one's nail. When you come to grade a pig, in many cases it is the difference between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. The pig dealer has a place in this operation. If he brings 100 pigs to the factory gate and the factory needs them, they get the maximum gradings and he earns his profit because he is getting a higher price for the farmer than the farmer could get himself. That has been the experience of all our pig producers. I have asked large and small producers what has happened.Once, they send to the factory and twice they sell to dealers. It would be a mistake if this element of competition were removed from the trade. Fine Gael have no objection to stating their policy on the matter. We feel there should be a continuance of the dealer system as well as the present proposal that the Pigs and Bacon Commission buy all the pigs and that they be directed towards the various factories.
Removing the L grade of pigs for those who go to bacon factories was a mistake. This is the third time the Government have interfered with the guaranteed price of pigs and while it would be quite impossible in public debate to go into the niceties of this, I am well aware that so far as pigs produced for grading are concerned, this meant on every occasion a reduction in the price the farmer could get for pigs.
We have had talk in Britain in the last few weeks: we had our quota of bacon fixed and it seems as if the rationalisation of purchases of agricultural produce on the British market which was done in the case of butter is now being extended to bacon. I suggest the present system of grading should be reviewed with a view to improving the lot of the farmer. We all want better grade pigs but over the past six months fat pigs have been making as much as lean pigs. A cartoon, also by Warner, in the Farmers' Journal another week, gave a pretty ludicrous idea of the situation. It showed the great, fat pigs smoking cigars and walking into the factories at the same price as the lean ones. The statistics of pig production show what happened. The number of pigs produced, comparing the 12 months up to the end of September in both cases, in 1961, for fresh pork and suasages, was 138,201. In 1962, we had improved to 261,136; in 1963, we were not running as good an average, with 249,399. It is still about 20 per cent of the number of pigs being produced for bacon.
We all know why. We have a preferential system as far as the veterinary regulations are concerned in Britain because of our complete freedom from disease and our island situation. This is something we should exploit to the maximum. So far as I know, we have about 95 per cent of the pork trade into Britain. I hope Britain will continue to eat more and more pork and my information is that such a trend is there and if so, it will help us considerably.
I think the arrangement made in relation to bacon will improve matters because the dumping of food on the British market had to end and it seems as if Britain has faced that situation and, through GATT, has decided in respect of all products as well as milk products, she must have this rationalisation. I propose to examine almost immediately the situation in regard to milk products and the increase in prices that came in respect of butter as a result of this rationalisation which was viewed by us in Ireland as perhaps not a good thing at the start. It was spectacular and it was quite a tremendous price increase. If we get an increase in the price of bacon in Britain, we are on to a good thing. But the numbers of pigs have dropped and the hopes of our farmers have not been encouraged.
The advisory services that could have led him to proper production and housing of pigs and the grants and the loans—surely he is entitled to his share of the National Loan as it fills, just as every other section of the community is, for productive purposes—have not been provided. Perhaps they are, on paper, but the volume of money going to them is not sufficient to have created this upsurge in the pig population which is needed. In view of our special situation in regard to pork and the present trend in British policy as regards, agricultural produce from abroad, the Minister should indicate that there should be a great increase in the number of pigs here and, through his advisory services, set about the injection of capital by loan and grant to achieve that aim.
Last night, the Minister interrupted me in regard to the price paid for milk when I had indicated the prices paid in the various countries in Europe. I had said that I quoted from the Government publication, The European Economic Community, laid before both House of the Oireachtas on 13th June, 1961. In fact, I was a halfpenny out. The Minister's interruption was to the effect that skimmed milk had not been taken into account. I can now tell the Minister it was and if he wants any confirmation of these prices, I advise him that there seems to be no difference at all except perhaps a halfpenny here and there between the figures produced by the Government in 1961 and the figures produced by Mr. Raymond Crotty, the economist, who did the survey of our dairying industry for the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association. They agree almost completely, apart from this odd halfpenny which led me astray. I do not think the Minister can make much point of the halfpenny. We accept that our price for milk is the lowest in Europe.
This brings me to perhaps one of the most important items that Fine Gael have considered in relation to this Agricultural Estimate, the price of milk. I dealt with the Minister's scheme for the subsidisation and the increase of heifer numbers in herds. Therefore, it is not proper for me to go over it again, except to say we regard it as a very small contribution, albeit a contribution, towards increasing our cattle numbers. But over the past month and before that, the Fine Gael Front Bench have considered the change in the situation as regards marketing butter abroad. I put down Parliamentary Question No. 18 on Wednesday, 30th October, to ascertain from the Minister for Agriculture the current prices obtainable in the British market for Irish butter and the comparative average prices for each one of the past five years. We find that in 1958 the price you could get for butter in Britain was 218/4d per cwt. and, in the Six Counties, where we always enjoyed a premium, 256/4d per cwt. But in 1963, up to 31st August we were getting 340/- per cwt. in Britain and 351/11 per cwt. in Northern Ireland.
Although this is true, if I were to quote the Farm Bulletin, September issue, on the subsidies that are estimated for butter and milk production in this year, it is found that the estimated figure of £6,418,000 is by far the highest yet. It must be remembered— and in this publication it is not adverted to—that we received a figure of 12,600 tons of butter as our quota for Britain and that we then received, because of a shortage of butter in Britain, an extra 5,000 tons which will virtually remove all our butter in cold storage. That brings us to the position of exporting far more butter to Britain this year and therefore bearing far greater losses than average production over the years would carry. Production this year is estimated to increase by only 10,000 cwt. from a figure of creamery butter at 985,000 cwt. to 995,000 cwt. as indicated in reply to a question by me on Wednesday, 6th November.
We have therefore reached this decision in Fine Gael, that we were right when we opposed—I was not here at the time—the Dairy Produce Marketing Bill, 1961, on the Second Reading, and that when Fine Gael put down amendments in the Seanad in an attempt to remove the obnoxious provision in a section of that Bill whereby the farmers had to pay one-third of the losses on all exports of creamery produce, we were also right. Having examined the figures and the improvement of 122/- per cwt., on the average, in prices and the fact that the loss— the price at which An Bord Bainne takes up butter is 469/- —is now less than half, we have decided to make this statement on behalf of the Fine Gael Party: that if we are elected now or at any future time and if the situation is then the same in relation to these prices, whether they be the same prices or prices in the same ratio, we will immediately remove the levy of one and three-eighths of a penny and thereby increase the price to the farmers by that amount. This levy was put on in two slices by the present Administration.
We believe this is the best way to get our cattle population up to the figure of two million which was the policy adumbrated by the last inter-Party Government and should be done as our first aim for agriculture. That price undertaking stands. It has been passed by the Front Bench of the Fine Gael Party and will be implemented. We want every farmer to know that we think this is the best way to get an increase in cattle numbers. We believe our farmers are entitled to a fair share just as their counterparts are in the rest of Europe. We believe the British policy at present of rationalisation in relation to agricultural exports will see to it that this will occur.
I mentioned briefly last night the success of "Kerrygold". Over the years, we have been telling you to put a brand name on your butter. You had, first of all, an investigatory committee. Then you had an advisory team, and the devil and all, but you never put a brand name on your butter. When you did put "Kerrygold" on it, inside months you were getting a premium of £22 per ton. I know the cost of advertising was probably half that sum, but I regard that half as something to be regarded as a capital investment for the future and not as something to be charged against each lot of butter going out.