Last night, I gave a brief review of some of the points of Government policy upon which I wished to comment. Naturally, I placed agriculture No. 1. It is well that we should keep in mind the background that seems to be behind the fluctuations both in Government policy and in marketing policy with regard to agriculture.
We go back to 1956. At that time, we were apparently convinced that the cattle trade was gone. The Argentine seemed to be a real threat and screaming headlines proclaimed the threat. Two years later, we reached the mass hysteria of the Spring of 1958. We could no longer sell dairy products. The price of butter on the British market had gone so low that there could be no future in it. To anybody who studied trends, it was, of course, quite obvious that a trade war was being conducted in what can be described legitimately as the best monopolistic fashion.
New Zealand had amassed a fund of close on £30,000,000 as a result of the very high prices paid earlier for dairy products and was using all those millions to drive us and other competitors out of the British market so that she might have the market for herself. But the drop was so steep and so drastic that even the New Zealanders grew appalled at what happened and, last year, a gradual recovery took place. We, however, panicked and we cut the price of dairy products by imposing a levy of one penny per gallon on milk. It was not the amount involved that mattered. It was the lesson it taught our farmers. They learned that increased production does not pay, and they learned that lesson at a time when everybody realised that the whole future of our economy depended on increased production both in the agricultural and the industrial spheres. The chickens produced in that lesson came home to roost pretty rapidly because, last year, when butter was making more on the British market than its controlled price at home, we had nothing to sell.
Remember, too, that last year the Irish farmer was compelled to sell products in the home market at less than he would have got for those products, had he been allowed freely to export them to Britain or elsewhere. He found himself in that position due to deliberate Government policy at the time.
There is, again, a drop in the British market to-day. It is not a very significant one but it calls for a slight subsidy in order to export. I hope that our Government will be resolute in tackling the problem now. I hope they will have the courage to give the much needed increase of at least 3d. per gallon to our dairy farmers. Even though it may not be possible to raise the products at home by the necessary 8d. or 9d., I hope that our Government will face up to paying a subsidy to get at least half of it; in other words, even though it means reintroducing the consumer subsidy abolished two years ago.
We are coming now to another stage. Again, the threat of the Argentine is beginning to appear in our papers. We read that the Argentinian beef herds are increasing so that what seemed to be a good proposition two years ago, to put our money in beef and beef products, is now appearing in its proper light as a very low form of production for Irish agriculture and one that is not comparable with dairying. Consequently, I hope the recent speech by the Taoiseach is the beginning of a really progressive and sustained attempt to get increased production in dairying products and, at the same time, to give our farmers the fruits of the increased standard of living which is enjoyed by other sections of the community.
We hope to see implemented this year those marketing boards which we have been promised. Every progressive agricultural country has found it necessary to introduce these marketing boards, and we cannot be an exception. When they come, I hope they will succeed in evening out some of the fluctuations. Take the disaster of last year about which Senators from the west of Ireland know so much, where due to a slight increase in the production of lambs—I think the increase was not more than ten per cent.—one lamb in every five had to be exported, and due to the fact that the price on the British market came tumbling down, the price on the Irish market came down in sympathy with it. The result was a 30 per cent. drop in the value of lambs last year. The farmers actually, by producing ten per cent. more lambs, cut their cheques by 30 per cent. Surely that is not realistic. I believe that any marketing board worthy of the name would have succeeded in mitigating that drop. The farmers were at least entitled to the same price on the home market last year as they got before for lambs, and the surplus could have been evened out and spread out as much as possible.
These are just some of the fundamentals that have to be observed in the development of agriculture. Above all, we must keep the confidence of the agricultural community, but I am afraid that confidence has been badly shaken by economic decisions the Government were forced to take in the past couple of years when we had price reductions due to increased production which cannot go hand in hand in the beginning phases of the development of agriculture but will, of course, later, when we progress to the stage that it is evened out by producing more and selling cheaper, but not in the initial stages of development.
One point which needs to be emphasised here is the question of marginal cost production; in other words, the question that bedevils the whole discussion, whether or not we can sell butter on the British market at 3/- a lb. when we are getting 4/- a lb. at home. Of course we can, if it means increased production. We know that if a man succeeds in getting 300 gallons per acre from his farm, and that in the following year, by better husbandry, he succeeds in getting 350 gallons, the extra 50 gallons will cost one-sixth of what it cost him to produce the 300 gallons. If you are dealing with marginal costs and provided your export prices are higher than your marginal costs, then there is a positive gain to the community as a whole to produce those articles rather than not to produce them. It is as simple as that so I hope we shall speak less of average cost and think more of marginal cost. I shall come to the same fallacy again when I am speaking on the cost of universities and university students.
There is one other point with which I should like to deal before passing from agriculture. We need to be clear on the question of bovine tuberculosis eradication. It is something that is forced on us by a prevailing fashion. It is like the Paris fashion shops saying that a lady's skirt must be 2" lower or 2" one way or the other. Tuberculosis eradication is exactly the same type of fad. In this case it is a health fad which is being forced on us and on the world. Because the major consuming regions like Britain have accepted it, it seems that we must comply.
No one for one moment should believe that our animal population is in a diseased condition. It is not, any more than we in the Seanad are a diseased collection of human beings because we are 99 per cent. reactors, I hope. Let us keep our sanity. It is a measure we are being forced to adopt but let us get away from the hysteria about our diseased cattle. In the abattoirs, not the slightest trace of disease is found, not a pin head, in 90 per cent. of what are classed as reactor cattle. I hope the Government are constantly trying to find ways and means of getting around it and of seeing if there is any other way of ensuring that our products are put on the market and accepted.
With regard to our dairy produce, so long as they are pasteurised, it does not make any difference whether the animals from which they come had or had not T.B., or at least whether or not the animal was a reactor. It is the same story with regard to meat. If we could find some way of getting around the eradication of bovine T.B. and if we could develop some type of vaccine to be given to the animals in the early stages which would confer a certain amount of immunity for the rest of their lives in the same way as many human beings are vaccinated with B.C.G., I think the Government should go ahead in that way. It would be very wise if portion of the expenditure on bovine T.B. could be channelled into the carrying out of research in an effort to find if there is any other way of breaking out of this unscientific approach to it. The killing of 19 or 20 animals just to get rid of one that is diseased seems to be a very crude approach in this so-called jet age.
Seeing that we are spending so much money on the eradication of bovine tuberculosis, I should like if we would at the same time turn our attention to the development of the dead meat trade. That is something we are all wishing and longing for. We feel it would rationally be a much more advantageous way of putting our products on the market. I believe we should get started on that now and try to even out the fluctuations in prices because at certain times our meat packers are not able to buy and then at other times they make a good purchase. Can we even out those fluctuations and develop a dead meat trade? Its history over the past eight or ten years has been one of great decline. At times, it is promising and then it almost folds up. Surely, with air transport and everything else, we should be able to place our meat products in first-class condition in markets anywhere in the world? I think far more consideration and finance would need to be devoted to that aspect.
Next I come to what has again become a major issue in the past year, our land policy. It has seen a change of Ministers in its administration but so far no real policy seems to be emerging, apart from various statements on the economic size of a farm, which is going up and up—40 acres, 50 acres, and so on. These are matters in our approach to which we must have a bit of sanity.
The question of the size of a holding, which is concerned with Government policy in the size of their Land Commission holdings and in their planning for the future, is very much dependent on the availability of land and the standard of living of our people. If we could provide everybody with thousand-acre holdings here, would they need do nothing but graze a few cattle and we would all live in the lap of luxury? We know that is impossible. Therefore, what standard can we use?
I suggest we can take the recent pronouncement by Mr. Conroy, President of the Trade Union Congress, that the aim of the trade union movement is to provide a wage of £10 a week for workers. That statement has been attacked as being unrealistic and it is argued that the amount is far too high. I think the present amount is just slightly over £8. Even though the statement is attacked, I cannot see how anybody can live on the figure. I know that people are living on it and that therefore it is possible to do so but I should not like to have to do it and neither would anybody here in the Seanad.
Surely, in our circumstances, an economic farm must be one that yields at least a living that is comparable with that? Farm survey figures show that, in the group 15 to 30 acres, the average income is just £6 per week on a 22-acre holding. That is away under Mr. Conroy's figure. You have to go to the next group with 42 acres to get an average income of £423 per annum, that is, £8 per week. One might say at present one would have to go to at least 50 acres to produce the same standard of living as our industrial population now enjoy. However, that is dealing only with averages.
The way to improve that, and we all know it needs to be improved, is to help the people on smaller holdings to produce more. We find in the farm survey that the top third of the farmers on 40-acre holdings have an average cash income of £13 per week. Those on the average 22-acre holding return £8. 10s. per week. Naturally, the £8 10s. when other benefits are added on, is at least as good as, or better than, the £10 a week target set by Mr. Conroy.
Therefore, one might say that, properly developed, a 20-acre farm can supply as good a living as what I regard as the very modest target now set by the trade union movement for Irish workers. The fallacy of this writing and talking to the effect that you need a 40-acre or a 50-acre farm is that all the people writing and talking at that level are people who themselves have incomes of £1,200, £1,400, £1,500 or maybe £2,000 a year. They cannot see how anybody could live on a farm of, say, 50 acres. They cannot see how anybody could live on a salary of, say, less than a £1,000 a year.
The fact is that the bulk of the people are living on it. We must be realistic in our thinking. I suggest, then, that the aim of raising our industrial wages from the present £8 to £10 a week should be matched by the comparable aim of raising our agricultural production and giving every facility to the people on small holdings to raise their production in the same way. If that is done, I feel quite confident that the 20-acre farm will produce a living any day comparable with a wage of £10 a week in our cities. We find that, if an industrialist submits plans to double the capacity of his factory, he has all forms of Government grants available to him. We voted several millions last year for the Industrial Credit Company and others, all of which was aimed at assisting such people. So far, there is no comparable legislation to help the small farmer to develop.
This free enterprise idea is, I know, a very fine idea but when it is applied to small farms, it just does not work. The man with only £5 cash for spending in the week cannot save on that. If, by any chance, he gets £5. 10s. or £6 one week, it is asking too much of human nature that he should save that extra £1 and accordingly build up in that way. Is he not entitled, in the event of such an increase, to have a little luxury for his family, based on that? In other words, the problem of developing the small farms is essentially one of the State giving the tools to these men to develop. We give tools to the airlines, to C.I.E. and to others. We expect payment on what is really a "never-never" system. I suggest we shall have to do the same for the small range of farmers who are in no position at any time to make savings on the very low cash incomes they now have. It is well to recall that, according to the farm survey, there are 4¼ million acres in farms of 100 acres or more.
