The Minister, when introducing this Estimate, travelled over the whole ground of agriculture and gave us figures for imports and exports. But, right through his whole explanation, the knife was prominently in evidence. It seems that the mentality of the present Administration with regard to agriculture is to be able to say "we have no surplus." They are not so much concerned with the increase of production and the building up of the productive capacity of the country as they found it, but that they should be able to show there is no surplus. When they have no surplus they consider they have reached their objective. The Minister seemed to be jubilant over the fact that he almost reached that stage, and, in proof of that, he mentioned that the price of export licences now had gone down to normal as it were. One would think any Minister for Agriculture in this country, who could not regulate the business of exportation so as to prevent drovers, who never owned a beast in their lives selling export licences in the markets, would find no satisfaction in the fact that there was no market for export licences now because we have reached such a stage that we have no surplus to export. The Minister overlooked the fact that from the time he was a boy, and slightly before that time, the productivity of this country had increased owing to the generous use of fertilisers and that the carrying capacity of the land, both in crops and live-stock, had increased, but that since he has come into office it has gone down.
I was at a dinner a short time ago where a few songs were sung. One of these songs remained in my mind although I am not very musical. I thought of it when the Minister was giving us his views on agriculture when introducing this Estimate. The name of the song was "The Legion of the Lost." It struck me that that song would accurately depict the condition of agriculture under the Minister's régime. He has not much concern for livestock. He treated us to a long discourse on the killing of old cows. These old cows were killed and sent to Roscrea or somewhere else to get them out of the way. That is all right, but at what cost to the country? Killing calves was another point he dealt with. I have here a letter which I received this morning from the Minister's own constituency. It is a bit long to read but it says, amongst other things, that they have not enough young cattle in Wexford. The Minister proposes to take money from his own constituents in Wexford—for some of this money is coming, indirectly, from them—for the killing of calves this year. Is the Minister living in a world of reality?
Last Thursday, in the Dublin market, store cattle sold at a higher rate than fat cattle. Why? Because there is an increased demand for store cattle. Why is there an increased demand for store cattle? Because the baneful effect of the Minister's policy of slaughtering calves is bearing fruit. A Government that seeks to administer the main industry of this country, and provides as a remedy the limiting of its output, is a Government that does not seem to grasp what its functions ought to be. We are told that the Government is doing other things. It has introduced us to the growing of tobacco. It has talked a lot about the experiments made in the growing of tobacco. It is estimated that 10,000 acres would provide us with all the pipe tobacco, cigarettes, cigars and snuff that we use in this country. We were told 10,000 acres would be enough. People acquainted with the potential yield and consumption of tobacco realise that 10,000 acres of land would give us all we require, and that not an ounce need come in from outside. The Minister admitted, when introducing his Estimate, that the revenue would lose 10d. a lb. in remission which had to be given on home-grown tobacco. Is it not like a joke that the revenue pays 10d. a lb. to persons to produce an article that is only worth 5d.? Deputy Eamonn Donnelly raises his eyebrows at that statement, but it is a fact. If it is not a fact the Minister made a wrong statement. I am not questioning his statement, but the Deputy may. In addition to that, we are losing 1,000 acres of land in Meath, the finest land in the world. That Meath land is included in the 10,000 acres devoted for the growing of tobacco. 10d. a lb. would work out at between £25 and £30 per acre, and we are taking in this 1,000 acres of good land as well.
Apropos of a question that I put here last week, as to the recoupment of agriculture for the money agreed to be paid by the President under the coal-cattle pact, the Parliamentary Secretary, Deputy Hugo Flinn, recited a whole litany of things that the Government were doing in other directions for agriculture, and to recoup agriculture for that valuable contribution to the British.
Tobacco was one. Is tobacco grown, under the conditions I have explained, a recoupment for any money that is paid as a tribute to Great Britain? Sugar beet is another. We are told that they have given the farmers a market for so many thousands of acres of sugar beet. I hope Deputies were here to listen to Deputy Norton's speech in this debate on Thursday last. He mentioned several counties, including beet-growing counties, where even £1 per week is not paid to agricultural labourers. Is beet growing under these conditions a substitute for the agricultural conditions we had prior to the present Minister taking office? It is by their fruits we shall know them. There is no need to go into statistics in regard to beet cultivation. Deputy Norton did not give an accurate picture of the whole position, because he was speaking from the angle of hired labour on farms. I challenge Deputy Donnelly, who represents beet-growing counties, to contradict me when I say that people growing beet extensively in Leix and Offaly are producing it by the slave labour of their own families. I have it from local people in Leix and Tipperary that it was a common thing during the beet harvest season, when the hired labour left off in the evening, for both the men and women of the farmers' families to work at the beet into the night.
Are these the conditions we are to have in agriculture? Does the Deputy who said that the whole fault with agriculture was that the agricultural people were too lazy, still subscribe to that? He is absent now. Perhaps he is growing a bit lazy from mixing with farmers here. Because a market is created at a huge price for sugar produced in this country under those conditions, we are told that that is a recoupment to agriculture. The Government are quite entitled to make those experiments, but they are not entitled to make one section of the community pay for the folly of their experiments.
Next we come to wheat, which was also dealt with by the Minister. My Wexford correspondent this morning informed me that they could not get in the winter wheat—they were short of seed—and the wheat they got in was a failure. I do not know how true that is. But, under those conditions, we are told by the Government that as compensation for the abrupt change in the agricultural economy, for the tribute to Great Britain of £5,000,000 in agricultural produce, and for the coal-cattle pact and its predecessor the economic war, 26/- per barrel is fixed as the price for wheat. It is important to note that that is fixed at a time when the world price of wheat is about 14/- per barrel. The Minister did not think it worth while to dwell on the livestock trade, into which millions of the Irish taxpayers' money have been pumped for the last 30 years to improve the breed, beyond trying to show that we have not now a surplus of livestock for sale, as if he were delighted with the fact.
We are told that tillage is the policy of this Government—that we should produce for our own requirements. On the broad principle of that I am in agreement with the Government far more than with the Opposition. But apart from whether that is a good or a bad policy it has certain implications. After having endeavoured for a long time to demonstrate to the Minister and his colleagues that more tillage means more live stock, they have accepted that fact. Certainly more tillage means a lot more food for live stock. An area of land under grass will not produce the same amount of food for live stock as an acre of tillage. No matter what economy is practised, from 80 per cent. to 90 per cent. of the entire produce of the tillage must be fed to live stock before being available for human food. More tillage, then, must of necessity mean more live stock. It follows from these premises that if you are going to have more tillage you must not slaughter your live stock; you must conserve and increase your live-stock population. Has the Minister taken leave of his senses when he stands up here and boasts of the slaughter of old cows and calves, and in the same breath tells us that he stands for a tillage policy?
Let us see what his tillage policy is. Take his wheat policy, for instance. If you take any man growing wheat on any sort of a scale for the last three or four years, you will find that with him it is wheat this year, wheat the next year, wheat the year after, and wheat the year after again. There is not a scrap of difference between that sort of agricultural economy and Bill Sykes going into a bank, holding up the staff and taking the money. In this case Bill Sykes is, so to speak, taking the money value that lies latent in the soil of this country, some of which is the product of years of labour and a heritage from preceding generations. He is taking away the fertility of the soil in two or three years to bolster up a policy that would not be tolerated in any civilised country. When you take away the fertility of the soil, what have you left? Nothing, and that is what the policy is coming to. The particular point I want to make is the absolute inconsistency of reducing the live-stock population and saying, at the same time, that you advocate a tillage policy.
With regard to wheat, I should like the Minister to deal a little more comprehensively with it, and to show how wheat at 23/- to 26/- a barrel of the prescribed standard is in itself a substitute for the conditions that obtain in agricultural economy. When considering that price of 23/- to 26/- a barrel, he must bear in mind the loss sustained in respect of the old cows that are being slaughtered; he must allow for that big loss; and equate it with what he considers an improvement in the one crop which he claims yields a cash return to the farmer, namely, wheat. If by some extraordinary physical revolution wheat could take the place of live stock for export, I should like to know where he could export it to and get a price for it.
I think it was the Minister's duty, in dealing with agricultural conditions, to have some consideration for either added burdens or the loss of advantages enjoyed heretofore. He knows that with the increasing overhead charges on agriculture, and the annual tribute to Britain, we had a further loss last year by the reduction of £100,000 in the Agricultural Grant. He told us triumphantly that the fees under the Slaughter of Cattle and Sheep Act were to be reduced by half, a reduction which he put, I think, at £140,000. It would be interesting to know what justification there ever was for that charge, and why any butcher should be called on to pay £1 for the slaughtering of a beast, 5/- for a sheep and 2/6 for a lamb. The Minister wants to convey to the House and to the country that he has done something wonderful for agriculture by reducing that monstrous imposition by half. He should, with apologies to the House and to the country, have abolished it altogether.
The Minister thought fit to bring in a Seeds Bill here recently. I supported that Bill because I consider that it was long overdue, but I cannot understand why he does not follow that up in a scientific way. I notice that the endowment for the Faculty of Agriculture in University College is the same as last year, and, I think, the same as it has been since the faculty was established. Is the Minister's idea of seeds nothing more than the handling of seed by shopkeepers just as they handle tea and sugar? I do not want to go into any detail with regard to seed breeding, but I want to draw attention to the fact that seed and plant breeding in this country are under the control of University College, Dublin, through the medium of the Faculty of Agriculture. I know a little about the conditions under which that was established. At the time of its establishment, a committee was set up by the governing body of the University to handle the matter for the governing body. What that committee recommended was adopted in globo by the governing body. Both the committee and the governing body were satisfied that a properly remunerated professorship should be given to plant breeding, but there was a difficulty in finding a suitable man for the job in this country.
It was, however, intended to keep the matter under consideration and to have a professorship instead of a lectureship some time in the future. That is nearly ten years ago. The Minister for Agriculture, who claims to be pursuing a policy of tillage in this country, came into office four years ago and I should like to hear him, or any apologist for such inconsistencies, telling the House how any policy of tillage can be pursued in this or any country in the world at present without having a properly equipped plant-breeding organisation in its experimentary colleges. The plant breeding in Glasnevin has shown no extension for ten years. The seeds we put in are in the main imported, but, without exception, they have been bred in foreign countries. What is the Minister doing about it? Of course, this kind of thing is too heavy and too dry for platforms, but it is the very quintessence of agriculture and the Minister is neglecting it.
The Minister thinks he is doing all that is to be expected by seeing that merchants importing seed in bulk label it in small parcels, and by his passing an Act here that will ensure that those small parcels are properly sealed and certified. I think I would be right in saying that if the sugar factories, about which we hear so much, refused to supply us with sugar-beet seed in the morning, we would have no sugar beet this year. That seed comes from the Continent. What would be the position of our factories if a European war broke out and we got no seed? We are told that sugar-beet cultivation here is an insurance against such a contingency. We are paying for the insurance, but when it comes to the policy being honoured, it will not be paid. We are paying the premiums every year, but the policy will not be honoured.
Further, on the question of sugar-beet cultivation, the Minister showed a terrible lack of appreciation of the necessity for a scientific cultivation of sugar beet, when he gave way to an agitation for a flat rate for sugar beet. I forget whether, when the Act was going through the House, it was provided that the price should be regulated by sugar content. As far as I can remember, the price was fixed at 30/- per ton on a 15½ per cent. sugar content. I think that is embodied in the Act, with a provision for a payment of 2/6 for each 1 per cent. of extra sugar content. I do not know whether it was quite legal, in face of that provision in the Act, to depart from paying for sugar beet on that basis. A serious point arises in that connection—that factories supply the beet seed, and the agreement was to pay for the beet at a flat rate per ton. I should like to know from the Minister whether there was any guarantee that the same kind of seed would be supplied? I would further like to know from the Minister whether anybody knows the name, the variety or the strain of the sugar-beet seed which he has planted, what is its source, or under what conditions the seed is saved. These are all important matters, and if we do not know sufficient about them, or if we do not control them, we do not control the industry for which we are paying a very high price.
If the Minister and his Party intend to carry this economy to its logical conclusion, I wonder do they look ahead as to where they are leading the country? Producing articles that are, under existing circumstances, not economic is, under modern conditions, hardly advisable, to say the least. How do they expect to utilise the land of the country? Wheat at 23/- or 26/- per barrel cannot be sold in any country in the world outside this. Does the Minister contemplate a surplus of that crop? Sugar beet at the price at which it is produced here will not find a market in any other country in the world. Are we going to develop on the lines of producing a surplus of that? Is the Minister not aware that a couple of the Leinster counties would feed the whole of the Free State? If we come down to that limited economy what are we going to do with the rest of the country? This policy is having its reactions even on the model county which the Minister represents. After explaining the condition of the wheat crop, my correspondent this morning informs me that the Flying Squad is busy every day collecting annuities and rates in the Minister's own constituency. With two countries in full cultivation we could feed the whole country. We shall grow beet, wheat and oats—for what? The calves are all killed and the old cows are all killed. What shall we do with the oats?
The Minister went through the farce of bringing in a Cereals Bill to fix a price for corn. There is only one price that can be fixed for corn. Corn itself, outside perhaps the small quantity used for porridge, is not used for human food. Some barley is used in brewing, not a terrible lot. Outside porridge and beer, this limited market for oats and barley, there is only one market, and that is the animals we produce with that feeding stuff. Now, the Minister can write on the blackboard and say that the price at which oats will be sold shall be 15/- per barrel, but if the price of the animal which is fed on that oats does not equate with 15/- per barrel for the amount of foodstuffs consumed by him, there is no use in the Minister fixing that price. That price can only be determined by our export trade. The Minister made an admission here quite recently—of course it was true if the Minister never had admitted it —that our export trade regulates prices on our home trade. The export prices for our meat regulates and controls the price of our corn, and all the feeding stuffs that we feed to animals to fatten them. That is the only control. Then our Minister for Foreign Affairs signs a coal-cattle pact under which £4 5s. 0d. per head, the first fruits of the Irish earth to the value of £5,000,000 sterling, must be surrendered to John Bull every year before we get anything.
The Minister fixes by rule of thumb or in some mysterious way a fixed price —a remunerative price—and we have all this balderdash about corn. If there is slavery in any business or in any country in Europe it is in this country at the present time. It is the slavery of the small, the middle, the fairly large, or what might be called the small-large farmers and their families. Those of us who come from the country know the system that obtains there. A family grows up until they arrive at 17, 18 or 20 years, when the eldest either remains on the land, or with the other members is sent away to the professions, or perhaps given a passage to some foreign country. Some of them may go into the Guards, some may become doctors or civil servants, but even the cost of sending one fellow to America requires some money. There is no money there to do that now, and the Minister knows it. You have in this country what might be called a glut of people in the small and medium sized farms.
