I listened to more amateur economics in this debate yesterday than ever I heard before. I understand everything is relevant in this debate, but I will just confine myself to one point. We were told that we must face this in a great national way as a non-party question; we must set up an Economic Commission, and so on. When I heard talk of that sort I knew perfectly well that the persons who spoke like that have no clear-cut ideas themselves on the question. But Deputy de Valera used the phrase, and followed that by saying that they had a clear-cut policy and that they had a solution for these problems. He said that the island had to be reconstructed. That is a tall order. He said we have to do this, do that, and do the other thing. Apparently everything is wrong. Agriculture is improperly organised; industry is improperly organised; the railways are wrong; the banks are wrong, the general policy of every organised body in the country is wrong, and we must alter this and alter that. Who are "we"? Are the people to have no say in the matter at all? Are the farmers to have no say as to how their industry is to be organised? Are the business men of the country to have no opportunity of saying how their business is to be organised? Who are "we" who must change the agricultural economy of the country, who must change the whole industrial organisation of the country, must change the transport system and the banking system? The Government apparently, or the Dáil, or this commission that is to be set up. They have got to do it. That is what takes place, and we are told that is a clear-cut policy.
Apparently there is a clear-cut policy for agriculture, as far as I could gather it, and one item which I should just like to examine is that which prohibits the importation of animal feeding stuffs. Just let us examine that as a solution for our economic ills and in particular as a solution for the problem of unemploy- ment. We are to prohibit the import of all animal feeding stuffs. Very well. Would it occur to the amateur farmers who are talking, as an extraordinary fact, that generally speaking far and away the greater proportion of imported feeding stuffs goes to districts where there is a high proportion of tillage as compared with pastures? Yet that is a fact. If you just take that fact and turn it over in your minds I think you will find some doubts as to whether your economic panacea is just right. Very little imported feeding stuffs go to Meath or to any of the grazing districts of the country. Most of the imported feeding stuffs go to the districts where there is a high proportion of tillage. Just think of that fact first and think of it in the light of your policy to prohibit imported feeding stuffs in order to encourage tillage and to give the employment that increased tillage affords.
Take another fact which is also illuminating in the light of that particular policy which has been enunciated. In Denmark there is no grass; nevertheless the Danes import per farmer at least three times as much feeding stuffs as we do. There is no grazing in Denmark because the land will not remain in grass for two years running. It is not suitable for grazing. Every acre of land practically that is arable at all, every acre of agricultural land, in Denmark is tilled and still the Danish farmer imports three times as much feeding stuffs as we do. Put these two facts together and try to square them with the doctrine that we should prohibit the importation of feeding stuffs and then, when you will see you cannot square these two doctrines, enquire why. The answer is quite simple. No country can grow economically all the feeding stuffs it requires. It might be done one hundred years ago. It might be done at the time when a beast was fattened at five, six or seven years old. I suppose that was a hundred years ago. It might be done if we fattened our pigs at two years, but it cannot be done now economically. You cannot produce the sort of foodstuffs that are wanted for modern requirements on the basis of producing them from food grown exclusively in the country, and we are not unique in that way. No other country can do it either. You must have a balanced ration. You must mix your rations as every farmer knows.
I suppose there are farmers on the Fianna Fáil Benches who use imported feeding stuffs. If the import of cotton cake or palm nut cake were to be prohibited; what do they think? Do they think it would be sound for farming, or do they think it should be done? If we increase our tillage—and we can increase our tillage; there is room for increased tillage—we would want more imported foodstuffs. We do not grow proteins to any extent, and we do not grow sufficient carbohydrates. If we cannot grow them and refuse to import them, what can we do?
Look at it from another point of view. Supposing you have that prohibition in force, who would be affected but the ordinary farmer who tills a fair proportion of his land at the moment and who gives a fair amount of employment as a result? Take a specific example, because in a diffuse debate like this we will never get anywhere unless we take some point and examine it closely. Take a farmer who is, say, a solicitor, with 200 acres. He has 30 acres of tillage, 60 or 70 cattle, 100 ewes, pigs and fowl. I am taking a typical case. Thirty acres of tillage on that farm is a high enough percentage for this country. That farmer must for winter feeding, in addition to tilling thirty acres, buy about £400 worth of feeding stuffs. You might say "why not produce it in this country?""Why not grow sixty acres?" Leave out this question as to whether you must have a balanced ration, as to whether you can economically produce feeding stuffs, all the proteins, all the carbohydrates and all the oils that go to making up economic feeding. Leave out that question and assume for the sake of argument that we are able to do it and do it economically. Look at it from another angle—the point of view of the farmer who has 200 acres.
He has at present thirty acres under tillage. He has to carry a lot of stock in the summer and in addition to that provide feeding for his stock in the winter. I am speaking of the average case. In spite of his tillage he has to buy £400 worth of feeding stuffs. You may say let him grow more. Assume that he can grow more and then what do you find? To grow the additional feeding required he has to till not thirty acres more, but fifty acres more. That is 80 acres in all. Where does he get that tillage? He goes into his meadow for it. His first position was thirty acres of tillage and thirty acres of meadow—sixty acres in all. He had say 180 acres entirely. He has 120 acres left. He has perhaps 20 acres of waste land, therefore he has one hundred acres of grazing for his stock in summer time. From that hundred acres he has to till sixty more, in order to feed the same amount of stock in winter as he would feed with the original area of tillage and feeding stuffs he bought.
Any farmer who has ever engaged in mixed farming will realise that, the moment you put up the proposition that the importation of all feeding stuffs should be prohibited, what you are really asking the farmers of this country to do is to become winter instead of summer farmers. I do not mind arguing that question if it is realised that it is the question we are arguing. You could argue it intelligently. We might even agree or disagree on it one way or the other, but at least we would agree or disagree intelligently on it. What I do complain of is that you have put up here in the most dogmatic and superior way economic doctrines by people who have not the slightest idea of their implications. I ask any farmer in the House, no matter what party he belongs to, if I am wrong in stating that the very moment you put a general prohibition on all imported feeding stuffs what you are asking us to do is to insist on winter farming in this country instead of summer farming. That is the question that is raised, and it is a very big one. Ought we do that? I suggest that proposition will not bear a moment's examination. The very fact that the farmers of this country have discovered, during the long experience of 100 years, that summer farming is more profitable for them is enough. They are pretty good judges. Farmers, like other people, make mistakes individually. Some are better farmers than others, some are better educated than others, but I suggest that the system of farming which has persisted for such a long time in this country, which has grown up slowly and which is the result of the wisdom of generations of farmers, is generally fairly right. There may be plenty of room for improvement and there may be a need for development. I think the need is for development, not change. The idea in this country that what is is wrong, and that what we want is change, is fundamentally wrong. Here is a prima facie case for what is. I suggest that a very strong case would need to be put up for what is not before the State should actively intervene on that side. What you need in this country, as everyone who goes in for mixed farming knows, is not a change in the system of farming, and that need not be argued because farmers will not do it, but development, and the agricultural industry is capable of a lot of development. I do not mean to say that we should not have more tillage. I think that we should, and I want to see more tillage in the country. I want to see the big farmers tilling more than they have been, and I want to see the small farmers till, say, an acre more. If they did so it is my opinion that this would be a far wealthier country than it is, but to suggest that the importation of all feeding stuffs is to be prohibited, that everything is to be produced in the country, and that instead of summer farming we are to have winter farming, all that, in my opinion, is simply talking nonsense and is beside the point.
Let us suppose for a moment that we did that. You start by forcing the farmers to go in purely and simply for winter farming. By doing that you ignore the fact that our summer is eight months long. We have summer farming here, because we have a longer summer than they have on the Continent, and the reason for that is that we have a much more open climate. The period for our summer farming extends from about 1st May to the end of December, and our winter period from the 1st January to the end of April. Suppose you did force farmers to go back to winter farming, to feed all their stock from home-grown crops, and to feed only from these, I suggest to farmer Deputies, whether they are on the Fianna Fáil or other Benches, that that is not going to improve the country, that it is not going to make the country more prosperous, because it will mean that we will produce less cattle than we are producing now. I think the aim should be to produce more cattle than we are producing. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that you produce the same number of cattle that you are producing now, even though you have to feed them indoors and with crops grown from seeds that you produce at home. To start with, we supply all the needs of this country in beef.
I do not want any Deputy to interrupt me with the irrelevancy that we import suet and other things like that to the value of £130,000. That is of no account. The point is that we produce all the beef we require and export nearly £15,000,000 worth of beef. That is to say, that after supplying all our own needs we have £15,000,000 worth of beef over. What are you going to do with them when you have finished them by the new method that is proposed? Are we to send them over to England or put them in glass cases? There is no alternative, because we have fed everyone in Ireland that will pay for the beef. Again, you will not get the farmer to part with his beast unless he is paid for it. The farmer, having provided for everyone in Ireland who pays for the beef, sends the balance, up to £15,000,000 worth to England. He will have to take the same price as he took before, notwithstanding that the cost of producing the animal and sending it over will be far greater than what it is at present, and that is supposed to be good business.
Take butter. We produce all the butter we need in this country, all that will be bought and paid for. In addition, we export £4,000,000 worth of butter. Do not complicate the situation by reminding me that we import £600,000 worth of butter. Let us allow for that importation and set off against it £600,000 of the butter that we export. What would the position be then? The position would be this, that, roughly speaking, we produce all the butter that the country needs, and export over £3,000,000 worth. What are we going to do with that? There are some Limerick Deputies in the House and I am sure they would be delighted to hear what is to be done with it. They would have to calve their cows in autumn and feed the calves during the winter and still sell their butter at the same price they are getting now. And yet that is regarded as a magnificent prospect. That is what Deputy de Valera really advocates if he only examines it. The Limerick farmer knows that, and that he would still have to sell this £3,000,000 worth of butter, which this country does not need, in the English market at exactly the same price that he is selling it now. Why is there not winter farming in this country, and why is butter not produced here in the winter? For the reason that we produce more butter than the country needs, and we have to export our surplus supply. We export the butter to a market where it is sold in competition with butter that is produced in summer time in New Zealand. New Zealand summer time is our winter. If we sent butter in winter to the English market, having provided for the requirements of all our own natives, it would have to be sold against butter from New Zealand that had been produced in that country during the summer which is our winter time.
There is the same position with regard to bacon. There is a lot of talk about the amount of American bacon that comes in here. Roughly speaking, we produce about £8,000,000 worth of bacon in pigs. We consume at home about £4,000,000 worth, and we export about £4,000,000 worth. We complete the transaction by importing about £3,000,000 worth. The point is that we produce all the bacon that we require for the country, and after doing that we have £1,000,000 worth of bacon over. That is really what it amounts to.
You can put it in another way, that we have enough bacon to supply the needs of the country and to export a £1,000,000 worth. We are told that bacon is also to be produced in the good old way—with home-grown feeding stuffs, exclusively, and that it is to be sold—the same applying to eggs— and that is regarded as an economic policy, something that will bring about employment and that will make the farmers rich. It is hard to expect the ordinary farmer to understand the implications of these statements when Deputies will not take the trouble to understand them.
At present the farmer finds it very hard to live. His conditions are bad. The conditions of the farmers all over the world are bad. He can only live by real hard work, by economies and by concentrating on his business. You have the farmer in that condition on the one side, and on the other you have the prospect held out before him that the State, or somebody, has some panacea by which he can be made rich immediately, by which he can be absolutely assured a market, by which he can get just the price for his produce that he wants. You have statements such as Deputy de Valera has made, statements such as other Deputies on the same benches have made, that tend to concentrate the farmer on a false issue, tend to concentrate his mind on something that is going to lead to nothing. As long as you have the farmers taught—and there are numbers of small farmers who have not a high standard of education—that there is some short cut to riches by means of protection—and protection has become a blessed word, like Mesopotamia; it sounds well—that by some such change in the system, you can get them riches, or at least prosperity and decency, and that they are wasting their time in concentrating and making things meet now, the tendency will be for farmers not to work.
You talk about protection, you talk about a great national effort and reconstruction and a new policy, and changing everything. Deputy de Valera's phrase was: "The reconstruction of the island," and we are told that we must visualise the future, we must make up our minds as to just what sort of economy we need, and that when we have done that, presumably that economy will establish itself automatically. What does that come to? It is, in my opinion, a defeatist point of view. Deputy de Valera asked us whether we are going to have great industries or rural industries. What answer was expected? Supposing I said that I am all for ruralisation, would not everyone say that that was grand? But how are we to bring about ruralisation? Surely Deputies do not think that we have just to say: "We are all for ruralisation and we are not for mass production," and that that will bring it about. It will not. I hold that all this talk about protection, about the ruralisation of industries, and the picture that that will bring before your minds of lovely little factories with thatched roofs, and the boys and girls dancing under the trees after work, is all due to a vague idea that we are a chosen people, that we must be sheltered from the world, and that we have not the guts or energy or brains to go out and take our place with the other Philistines. That point of view is all wrong. I do not call that an Irish-Ireland point of view. It took some Deputies five years to discover that we have political independence. Of course I do not expect them to admit it now, but they know it. Now they tell us that economics is the thing to concentrate on. I agree, but what are they doing now? They are preaching a more devastating economic doctrine than formerly they preached in politics. They are preaching a doctrine exactly opposite to self-help and self-reliance. They are telling the farmers, the industrialists and the unemployed that there is some sad fate hanging over the country, that they are enmeshed in a situation, as Deputy de Valera said, that they must not be asked to do the sort of work that the uninitiated are asked to do, that they must not be asked to keep their noses to the grindstone, that they must not be asked to compete with the ordinary foreigner's point of view, that we must have——
