I move:—
That Seanad Eireann deeply deplores the arrangements for the pricing of wheat of the 1958 crop as recently announced by the Government, and strongly recommends that the matter be reconsidered and that the price for the entire 1958 crop be not less than that for 1957.
First, I wish to tell the House that this motion specifically directs the attention of the House to the price of wheat in 1958. It does not lead on to any further year. We freely admit that nobody can guarantee prices for long periods. It is wise, however, when considering the price fixed by the Government and the arrangements made at the same time by the Government in respect of that pricing, to consider the whole lead up to the wheat situation at the present moment.
Up to December, 1953, there was no such thing as a surplus of wheat envisaged by anybody. The House will remember—I am not referring to the war period—the advertisements under the different Governments which appeared in various newspapers asking us to grow more wheat. When a Government or Government Department issues such an advertisement and takes such a step, it must of itself take responsibility for it. Up to December, 1953, it was a fact that the opinion of the Department of Agriculture and all the political Parties was that there could not be a surplus of wheat in Ireland.
In December, 1953—I state this for no political reason as it is now an accepted fact—the Government of the day asked its civil servants to produce the quantity of Irish wheat which we could consume in one year. Taking into consideration the amount that could be included in the grist, the amount of flour consumed by the people and the percentage of flour taken from the wheat which was milled, the answer given to the Government was 300,000 tons. The decision of the Government of that time was to aim at a harvest of 300,000 tons of wheat.
Prior to December, 1953, the then Government and the Department of Agriculture must have seen a surplus of wheat looming up on the horizon when they set about the task of finding out what were the wheat requirements of the country. It did so with the specific intention of so directing policy that the figure got would be 300,000 tons. In the harvest that followed, there was a great surplus of wheat based on the figure of 300,000 tons. In May of the following year, 1954, the Government changed. The succeeding Government found themselves with a colossal surplus of wheat and, finding themselves in that situation, took a decision to lower the price.
Following the succeeding harvest and notwithstanding the lowering of the price, there was sufficient wheat grown to feed the country. It was evident that agriculture in Ireland had departed from the traditional line of processing much of our cereal products that we produced on the farms. In other words, the walk-it-off the land policy had disappeared. Many factors must be taken into account when we look for the reason for this. Capital cost was one. Nobody except the commercial bank, provided you had taken out administration in respect of your farm, would help in the purchase of stock. On the other hand, if you decreased the level of your stock farming and increased the level of wheat farming, then you might get on the "never-never" system a combine harvester at possibly one-sixth of its market value. You could go, at spring—or winter, if you were sowing winter wheat—and avail of credit terms for fertilisers and seeds until the following harvest. It was then seen by the Government of the day that there had been a very great change-over. There were losses in capital investment by farmers in combine harvesters and machinery for the production of grain.
The price of wheat was increased and, even though it was not brought to its previous level, it went half-way. A line was taken by the then Opposition—the present Government—so that farmers were led to believe that, if they re-elected them to office, they would bring the wheat price to a figure such as 82/6.
I shall not handle this motion in a political way. I shall merely give a couple of quotations and then pass on from them. I may give a couple of quotations later on. I am not trying to score points but the quotations are very relevant. They are made to prove that the then Opposition—even though there was a surplus of wheat in 1954 and that the Department of Agriculture knew it, their Government having taken a decision as late as December, 1953, that the requirements of the country amounted to 300,000 tons of dried wheat—led the farmers to believe that if they were re-elected to office, they would most certainly raise the price.
My first quotation is from the Sunday Press of 23rd October, 1955— the harvest-time succeeding the drop in the price of wheat. A personal interview was given by that very decent man, the late Deputy Thomas Walsh, a Minister for Agriculture. The banner headline was: “Farmers Count Losses in Millions... Wheat, Beet, Potatoes. Incentive Has Gone.” In the entire article given the late Mr. Walsh, who was shadow-Minister for Agriculture of the day, there was no mention of stock farming, cattle, pigs or of anything but the production of cereal and cash crops for sale at harvest time. Therefore, we may take it that the Opposition of the day was suggesting to the farmers that all they had to do was to put them back in office and they would increase the price.
They were in office on the 4th May, 1957. The acting-Minister for Agriculture was Deputy Aiken, now Minister for External Affairs. I have here a quotation from the Irish Farmers' Journal of the 4th May, 1957, from the official page of the National Farmers' Association and from the report of the National Farmers' Association Committee:—
"The Minister could not see his way to increasing the price of wheat. At this stage, an increase, he stated, would not affect the amount sown. He said, however, that he would examine how Government action in recent months had affected the prices of granulated compounds and agricultural chemicals."
To wit, the acting-Minister there implied as late as the 4th May, 1957, after the last harvest's wheat had been sold and sowing was finished, that, but for the fact that an increase then would not increase the acreage, he would give that increase. Does that, again, not show that the present Government were quite prepared to lead the farmers to believe and, in fact, did so, that all they had to do was to vote them back into office to gain a rapid increase in the price of cash corn crops?
The farmers cannot and must not be expected to know the grain trade. They cannot and they must not be expected to be able to assess market trends and to know always what will happen one year, 18 months or two years later. There is a very grave responsibility on any Minister and his Party, and there is a greater responsibility on the Minister for Agriculture and on his Department than on any other Minister, to lead the farmers towards the right road, to get them on the right way so as to make sure that their economy and rotation is designed to bring them a greater profit irrespective of what political gain there may be for the Party which the Minister of the time represents.
To give the Seanad an idea of what was happening during those years when the Party of which I am a member was telling the farmers that they must revert, in part at least, to the old policy of not selling all their grain crops for cash at harvest time, of not creating a glut and that they must increase their farm stock, the Opposition were saying: "Put us back and we will give a greater price." The tragedy is that the Opposition was believed. As a result we had a drop of 19,300 in the number of in-calf heifers from January, 1957, to January, 1958. During the same period we had a total drop of 34,200 in cattle.
If the Opposition of the day had lived up to their responsibility of telling the farmers the truth about the grain trade, that they must now concentrate on a proper rotation, not on an over-production of grain crops for cash, but on the ordinary mixed farming which is a tradition in this country, then the farmers could now be said to be responsible for their dilemma of a decrease in the price of wheat as well as a surplus of wheat. However, the Opposition did not do so. Therefore, it is charged with the sin of allowing the farmers to be led astray and it is also charged with the reduction in the numbers of cattle which I have already mentioned. That reduction may seem small. Remember, which I have already mentioned. That reduction may seem small. Remember, however, that with increased production from farms—improved farm techniques, better fertilisation—our cattle numbers should be moving up year by year. The stock we can carry on the farms should be moving up. If our agriculture were suitably designed and bent toward the proper goal then our numbers of cattle would be increasing. A decrease at this stage, where there is good farming techniques such as short-term ley, much better methods of feeding cattle in yards, and so on, is catastrophic and something we cannot accept.
I will now address myself to the first part of the motion which deals with the arrangement that was made and I should like to refer to the disposal of a surplus which, as stated by the Minister for Agriculture in the Dáil recently on the wheat motion, amounts to 95,000 tons. In calculating the surplus, the Minister has taken into account a normal carry-over of 50,000 tons. He has also stated on that wheat motion, and on various occasions in the past six or eight weeks, that he is accepting liability for the surplus at the moment and that the Government is putting up the money for it. If there is a surplus, and if he is accepting liability for it, what is the point of carrying over 50,000 tons of wheat which is merely an assurance in a year when there might be a bad crop that you will not have a scarcity of wheat at harvest? At present, you are expecting at least a 10 per cent. increase in wheat. If the Minister is prepared to dispose of the present surplus, it is unfair that this 50,000 tons next year will be placed on the backs of the farmers, if the present arrangement holds with regard to the price of wheat. Secondly, the disposal of 400,000 tons at £26 a ton for compound milling, is, in my view, a price arrangement which does not leave the Government carrying the entire baby.
I was looking for a parallel in imported feeding stuffs to this Irish wheat which will be used for animal feeding stuffs. The best thing I could get, and in my view an exactly similar product, is what is known as German wheat middlings, for which import licences were granted over the last six months. German wheat middlings are German black flour, flour produced from wheat at a very high extraction rate, and they are excellent feeding; they are as good as the Irish wheat which will be released and in fact they are milled, so that will obviate the necessity of milling.
The Irish tradition, need I say, is that the price of feeding stuffs was always the world price. That tradition was preserved by the previous Minister for Agriculture, Deputy Dillon, in his two terms of office. He always opened the ports as far as bran and pollard and feeding stuffs were concerned and made the Irish product, even when bearing a subsidy, compare with the imported product. I personally have bought these German middlings at as low as £22 a ton c.i.f. Dublin in the last two months. It is totally unfair that this figure of £26 a ton should be charged to the feeders of pigs and the feeders of other forms of live stock, when the import price of the comparable product is £22 a ton and the Minister for Agriculture has stated he is bearing the loss in respect of the surplus in this year.
Lest anyone should jump to his feet to correct me, I want to say that in this £26 a ton, there is a figure of 20/- to 30/- —I quote the Minister's figure in the Dáil motion—for the haulage to the buyer's nearest railway station. Even still, the price is considerably more than the price for a good quality comparable product, ready milled, from abroad. The Irish pig feeder is as entitled, when the Minister makes a price arrangement in regard to any product, to get his product from abroad, as his competitor is, on the overseas or British market or where-ever he has to sell the end product. Now, 15,000 to 20,000 tons of this surplus wheat is to be sold to flour millers at £26 a ton. This arrangement was included in the statement that the extraction rate would be lowered by 8 per cent., that there would be an increase of a ½d. in the loaf, after the previous fixing of price, and that there would be an increase in the price of Irish bran and pollard of £1 a ton. Again the Minister has come out in public and has told the farmers—on whom all this eventually falls, no matter what arrangement he makes—that he will be responsible for the entire loss on the surplus wheat of this year.
Again, I refer to the practice of the previous Minister, in seeing that the Irish feeder got his feeding stuffs at the same price as that at which they could be obtained on the world market and I want to say that in small lots, on licence—not yet in Dublin but arriving—there is Argentinian pollard at £19 15s. a ton and the Minister has arranged with the flour merchants to charge £23 10s. a ton for the Irish pollard from this wheat—not, if I may correct myself, from this particular lot of wheat but from all the wheat the flour mills take.
Prior to this, when the Minister made an arrangement with the flour millers, he was dealing with Exchequer moneys. I think he was entitled at that stage not to give the exact details, but any arrangement he made with the millers would be, of course, subject to parliamentary question, if any Deputy thought fit to address one to him. But in this case the matter is one which affects the price of wheat to the farmers and the price of pollard and the price of feeding stuffs are prices which also affect the farmers, and he is dealing exclusively, in the future, in wheat, with the farmer's money.
I feel it is incumbent upon him, or whoever replies to the motion to-night, to give the exact nature of the arrangement with the flour millers whereby they get 15,000 to 20,000 tons of wheat at £26 a ton, they lower the extraction rate by 8 per cent., increase the price of flour by 4/6 a sack or a ½d. a loaf and increase the price of bran and pollard to a figure that now stands as much as £3 10s. a ton above the price of the imported product at a time when the pig feeders of this country are cutting sows' throats as quickly as they can get at them.
There is also an odd discrepancy in figures to which I would like to draw attention. It is in the Taoiseach's contribution to the wheat debate. I quote the Dáil Debates Volume 165, No. 6, column 868:—
"I think the Minister mentioned that we would lose up to £20 a ton by exporting it whereas, the other way, we would be losing something about £12 a ton. However, we had to meet the bill and, so, this £1,250,000 will be required. We could not continue that."
Yet, when I scrutinise the Book of Estimates, I find that the figure included in the book is £800,000. There is a discrepancy there of £450,000 and I would wish that whoever replies to-night to this debate should be armed with the explanation. Is it a fact that the Taoiseach, when computing these figures, was thinking of the 50,000 tons which, in my view, the Minister for Agriculture and his Department have placed on the farmers' backs and which will reduce the price of their wheat next year if the present arrangement stays. If you compute the loss not on the 95,000 tons surplus wheat, but on 145,000 tons you get a figure of approximately £1,250,000.
The Taoiseach spoke in Enniscorthy and he saw fit to refer to wheat. It may seem a small thing, but I quote from the Irish Press of March 10th, page 5:—
"The excess in the last couple of years in the output of wheat beyond the amount required for the production of bread and domestic flour has presented us with special difficulties."
Now, the Taoiseach is a very able politician and he is very good at choosing his words. I want to draw attention to the fact that the surplus of wheat which existed in 1954 was in fact of greater magnitude and a more serious type of surplus, than the surplus of wheat which this Government had to meet in this year. I give the figures for the deliveries to mill in 1953 and in 1954, in round figures. In 1953, wheat deliveries to the mills were 2,600,000 tons; in 1954, 3,250,000 tons; in 1956, 2,781,000 tons; in 1957, 3,250,000 tons. The only difference between the wheat in 1954 and the wheat in 1957 was that, in 1954, the quality of Irish wheat was such that it was found, with the milling techniques prevalent at that time, that you could not include as much of it as you could include at the present time. I want to state from my experience as a person in the grain trade that the wheat produced from last year's harvest now in store is surprisingly good. The quality of the wheat in store for milling is exceedingly high and the Government could, if it wished, raise the inclusion figure above 79 per cent.
The Taoiseach in Enniscorthy—he was referring to the Fine Gael attitude to wheat—said: "To the townspeople they said, it meant dearer and poorer bread, but at present, if it suited their book, they would be telling the townspeople that it meant an addition of something like £10 a ton for wheat to the mills with consequent increases in the price of bread." My approach is not too hidebound. I feel that the Minister, faced with the problem, not of the magnitude of the problem of 1954, because the quality is so much better, did not do enough, and if he behaved in the manner I now suggest —he and the Taoiseach have consistently said that no one suggested any way out of this difficulty but I am going to suggest one now—he would find himself enabled, with practically the same money, to pay the same price for wheat as last year. He would thus give the farmer the opportunity to reset his sails and to decide that he was told lies in 1954, 1955 and 1956 by the Opposition and told the truth by the Government, and that he must proceed to reorientate his farming and aim at having one more cow, one more sow and one more acre under the plough so as not to produce continuous surpluses but to gain the most profit for himself.
The figure for consumption of wheat is 300,000 tons. Last year, we produced 370,000 tons and in the meantime surpluses had become evident. Samples of wheat were handed to the Institute for Industrial Research and Standards for investigation and that body has produced findings that an all-Irish loaf is possible. I am not foolish enough to think that any tests on relatively small quantities of wheat are sufficient for the Government to take a decision upon. But the Government has taken no decision on that. The biggest test that was taken so far was a two months test in the Curragh camp with an all-Irish loaf produced at 80 per cent. extraction of wheat. To my knowledge, the bread was excellent.
I would suggest to the Government that they should follow the example of a very successful firm in this country when it wants to test new barleys, namely Messrs. Arthur Guinness, who in the last few years have themselves done brewing and malting tests on units of 5,000 barrels of barley. I suggest that the Minister has the responsibility of setting up milling and baking tests on 20,000 barrels on a loaf of all Irish wheat or a 95 per cent. Irish wheat. If he does that, he will at least have the farmers on his side. They will see that he is doing something for them. The present situation is that he has thrown the situation to them like a bone to a dog and they can chew on it if they like or they can walk away from it. That is not of any value to a farmer who has been consistently told that the way to get increased prices for wheat and the way to allow himself to have a higher amount of corn crops for cash sale in his rotation was to vote Fianna Fáil back into office and to vote the other Government out.
If the Government or the Minister are to accept their moral responsibilities, they must give some rock to the farmer to which he can cling. I suggest that if the Minister would now set up this 20,000 barrels milling test, he would find that he could include 95 per cent. Irish wheat from this harvest in the grist and if he did, he would be enabled to use 385,000 tons of Irish wheat. I am in a position to say that the National Farmers' Association have also decided that the deliveries of wheat to the mills next harvest will be in the region of 400,000 tons.
Let us say that if the quota was fixed at 380,000 tons, there would be two results. There would be a drop of 3/- approximately per barrel in the price paid to the farmer for wheat. I would suggest that the Minister could pay that from the Exchequer rather than have to pay further large subsidies on surplus wheat for feeding stuffs. As well as that, there would be some increase in the price of the loaf, but the increase would be very small. As far as I can make out, it would be in the nature of ¾d. on a 4 lb. loaf, less than ½d. on the ordinary 2 lb. loaf.
The farmers are entitled to provide as much wheat as possible for Irish consumption. If they are in a position that they have to pay prices for protected goods produced in Irish industries, then they must be entitled to the whole of the Irish market. I believe that the Minister would be perfectly enabled by the Government, if he put that question to them, to raise the figure to 380,000 tons, to bear the difference of 3/- a barrel himself and the suggested increase of less than ½d. in the price of the 2 lb. loaf.
All that is not sufficient. The present Government, when in opposition, led the farmers astray. The Acting Minister for Agriculture on May 4 this year implied that there was still a ready market for all the wheat that could be grown. Decent hard-working farmers living down the lanes, perhaps not buying daily papers every day of the week, have been led astray. I am not making that as a political point; I am merely making it as a statement of fact. The Minister must now face up to his moral responsibility and say to them: "Look, here is the situation; here is what I will do for you." Following that, he must say to them:—"Here is your agricultural policy for the future."
In the long term, I would suggest a few things to the Minister. One of them would be a complete reversion to the policy announced by the ex-Taoiseach in October, 1956. I would like to remind the House that on that day a scheme was announced for giving small loans to small farmers for the purchase of stock. That was the result of the obvious situation in which, if things proceeded as they were going, the farmers would produce too much grain and cash crops. That would mean that more oats and barley could be produced on the farm fed to the cattle and walked off the lands.
At the present moment, the farmer has bought his combine harvester and his implements. He has gone into wheat growing in a big way and he has used the capital which he got from selling his cattle to buy this new machinery and these implements. He cannot suddenly change now. The only way he can change is if capital is provided and injected into the agricultural economy to provide him with enough money, not to sell the heifer, but to mate her and to sell the calf, not to reduce the number of cattle on his holding, but to increase it and to wait two and a half years to make the profit. He will need to wait two and a half years to sell a calf, to share in the first fruits of a change in his farming policy.
What has been announced for farmers in 1954 and 1955 is responsible for their dilemma in 1957 and, from 1957, there must be a new starting-off point. The basis of that new start must be an increase in the stock on the farms of this country. I suggest to the Minister he should advise the Government that, as well as having national loans, they should try to float a national agricultural loan and then bring the people of Ireland to believe that, if there is not investment in agriculture, then, without doubt, the whole country is doomed and its economy must stagnate. If the Government did that, they should also make it quite clear that those loans would be given to the farmers only in fluid capital, and that in them there would be some future for the farmers and some starting-off point at which they can emerge from their present unfortunate position.
In conclusion, I want to say that I have endeavoured not to handle this motion in a political way. I have endeavoured to show that there are various aspects of the present price arrangement for wheat which require specific and explicit explanation. I hope the Minister does not regard it as a political motion. I should like him to say what he thinks of the present dilemma in which the wheat farmers find themselves. Does he accept responsibility for the statements made by former Cabinet Ministers in 1955, 1956 and 1957? I know he did not say much, but other members of his Party did, and I suppose every member of the Party must be responsible for the deeds of everybody else in it. Is he now prepared to produce a proper agricultural policy for this country and even though such a policy cannot stand forth as a shining light and as something which will bring Cadillacs to farmers in 18 months, it will be a sound basis on which they can proceed, not towards surpluses, not towards goals dictated by political considerations, but towards a sound goal on which they can build their future.