I move:—
That Dáil Eireann is of opinion that the Government should inform the House of the present position with regard to food supplies for man and beast, and the steps now being taken to prevent the possibility of famine and the recurrence of the disaster of under-production of 1941.
It is fortunate that this motion, which has had many vicissitudes, should come before the House just now and that the House should be given an opportunity of debating the food position when there is ample time to prepare for the cropping season of 1943. Since the emergency arose in 1939, there have been spasmodic attempts to deal with the food position, but it was never dealt with properly and never dealt with in time. Every season, the Minister, whom we have caught here now in time, changed his opinion on his food plan for the following year several times, and his final plan was never available in time. It is well, so far as concerns the coming year, which in the order of things will be the most acute year of the emergency to date, that we have got this motion before the House in time and can get the Government's mind on it. It is necessary to know what exactly is the food position from last year. It is necessary to know what provision is being made for next year, and it is very important that those who apply themselves to the production of food should know the programme ahead and know what facilities and help there are available from the Government. I have no special knowledge of the food position. I can only judge it from its effects, and it is most important for the country to know how productivity will be maintained. We have no manures, and the land is getting poorer. Some land has been giving wheat for years and is now hardly able to give any wheat.
The want of manures is a very important factor in considering the food position. The people, especially the people in the towns—and I have met them constantly around Dublin—were ready to slaughter farmers down the country who are alleged to have given their corn to animals when it was wanted here for human food. The Government took action and prosecuted such farmers. I am not finding fault exactly with them for that, but I am finding fault with them because they did not make provision for feeding stuffs for the live stock. We have the repercussion to-day of that neglect. We have a shortage of butter, rationed at 2/- a lb. We have a scarcity of bacon, a scarcity of eggs, a scarcity of all animal products, and I am afraid we are confronted with a scarcity of milk—all because of the want of planning to provide animal food. The people in the cities are now beginning to realise that those who fed their inferior wheat to cows to produce milk and butter were, after all, not such criminals, that they were not criminals at all. I will go even further and say that they had more foresight than the Government, because they were providing us with the milk and butter that the Government have failed to provide for the country as a whole.
Now, I have heard—I am not speaking from my own experience because I have not threshed yet—that although we may have an increased area under wheat and oats this year the yield from it is not up to normal. I have no evidence of that, but I have heard it said. I expect, and my neighbours expect, that it will be as good as in previous years, but this is inevitable: we are taxing our wheat lands to produce wheat after wheat for a number of years, and that can have only one ending. Those lands will not be able to produce wheat—perhaps will not be able to produce anything—without the application of manures that we have not got.
With regard to the production of milk and milk products, butter, etc., what has the Minister in mind that we will feed milch cows on? Hay and roots, if we have enough of them, will not produce milk and will not produce milk of the required standard. Will the Minister say that the quality of the food has no bearing on the milk? I would suggest that the Minister should have a talk with Professor Drew. I suggest he should read some authority on milk production, if he has not done so already. Everybody who has experience knows that if you miss giving concentrated food to cows for even one meal there will be a reduction in the standard of the milk. Yesterday evening I was talking to a small dairyman. He did not know how he was going to carry on. He had nothing with which to feed his cows but some pitted grains, inferior hay and mangolds. It is a physical impossibility, with that feed, to produce milk with 3 per cent. fats—the minimum standard required by Local Government Order. That man in all honesty and sincerity is producing milk and contributing to the food supply, but if an inspector takes a sample of the milk produced under these conditions it will be found deficient in fats. In normal times the machinery, properly, is so arranged that no power can stop a prosecution in cases where milk is not up to the required minimum standard. A fine is imposed, but the fine is trivial compared with the exposure that the man is selling milk below standard. To the ordinary mind it at once appears that the man is diluting the milk. He is doing nothing of the kind. He is selling the milk as the cows gave it, and the cows cannot give better milk because they are not getting proper feeding stuffs, and the man cannot get proper feeding stuffs for them. It is all right to prosecute and persecute a producer when he does not do what he should, but when he is doing all he can why should he be penalised? The fault arises from the want of planning for the production of food.
The Minister is not responsible for the emergency. He is not responsible for all the shortage. Neither is the Government. If I offer criticism it is that I think they have not shown foresight enough. I speak in order to be helpful and I hope my criticism will be constructive. The Minister sees the difficulty and I am sure he has been worried about it. He realises that it would be very bad to reduce the standard required for milk, and I say the standard should not be reduced until every avenue is explored, but I put it to the Minister that milk of that standard cannot be produced on the food available. If there are such concentrated foods available for milch cows, what are these foods? I do not know that oats will be available for them. There may be a certain amount of small wheat, but there is none of the ordinary concentrated foods that we used to give to milch cows pre-war. I do not believe—I would be glad to know if the Minister has any hope— that we will have whiter flour. I am not now thinking of the texture, colour or quality of the flour so much as that whiter flour will make available a considerable amount of feeding stuffs. Personally, I always thought it was a grave mistake, a disastrous mistake, to have lowered the standard of flour by raising 70 per cent. extraction. We sacrificed in that way 200,000 tons of valuable feeding stuffs that could be used now to produce good quality milk and to fatten pigs. We have lost that.
I do not think the crops this year will give us a surplus of feeding stuffs and, with no fertilisers, thrown back entirely on farmyard manure, we will reach the stage inevitably when this country will not be able to feed us. People talk of practical farmers. I know only one kind of farmer, that is the practical farmer. There may be some armchair farmers in this country, but it is the practical farmer that I am concerned with. The Minister is a practical farmer. He knows that it is not the area under tillage that counts —in present circumstances it counts less than it ever did in our lives—but the area properly tilled and manured that counts. One acre well tilled and well manured is worth ten acres of badly manured land. Some townsfolk think that if 25 per cent. under tillage is not giving us all the food we want we should till 26 per cent. or 30 per cent. or 40 per cent. They believe food production will increase according as you increase the area under tillage. The cornerstone of our food production, of our very existence, is the manure available for the land. I am sure nobody will deny that. Accepting that as correct, it is all important that we should keep up the supply of manure.
Last year I was instrumental in making a deal for straw with paper mills. I think farmers should consider carefully whether even the big price now offered for straw should induce them to deprive their land of that straw. They should consider ways and means of rotting it and putting it back into the land in order to maintain the standard of production. I would ask the Minister to consider that suggestion. I suppose a farmer would get two tons of straw from one statute acre. Straw is now fetching £4 and £4 10s. a ton in the Dublin market. That is a great temptation to a farmer, but what is he going to do with his acres of stubbles if he does not rot the straw and put it back into the land? We are greatly cut away from the world now, and it looks as if we will be still further cut away. We have to rely on the fields of this country, and these fields require nourishment if they are to produce crops next year. Fertility must be restored to the soil in the same proportion as it was taken from the soil in producing this year's crops. We have to be very careful of our economy now. I would put it to the Minister that he should see to these details and should explore every avenue in order to conserve our fertilisers and manures. There is no use in increasing tillage unless we are in a position to manure the increased area under tillage. That is the only problem that I have. There is nothing in tilling land and producing crops. It is quite a simple routine job if you have manure to put into the land.
I am sure every farmer finds that is his problem at the present time. The Minister should make it a national problem and see what we are confronted with. I also think he should endeavour to co-ordinate effort in implements and, particularly, in threshing.
I understand that a lot of corn, in a bad way, is still out in stooks. A good deal of corn that is in is not in a very good way either. I am not satisfied that the threshing machinery we have at our disposal is being used to the best advantage. I do not know whether I should refer to a decision given in the courts last year about a threshing engagement in the County Dublin. Those people, of course, know their own business best, but I can say that that decision has been disastrous to farmers in the County Dublin because, since it was given, you will not get the owner of a threshing set to tell you the week that he will come to you. It was a pity that the case was ever let go to a decision. I suggest to the Minister that he should keep a watchful eye—perhaps he is doing so—on the use of the machinery at our disposal. I say that because the land in present circumstances must be at the disposal of the community. Whatever we may think of private ownership, that is for normal times, but in existing conditions the land must be at the service of the community. If we are asked to place it at the service of the community, then the community, speaking through the Minister for Agriculture and of the Government, whatever Government it may be, must see that we are helped out when we do our end of the job.
As regards the motion, I am anxious to here what the Minister has to say on the different views that have been expressed. This is not a matter of making criticism, or otherwise, against the Government or against anybody else. We are now starting our production for next year. We are ploughing for next year's crop, and now is the time for the Minister to put his cards on the table and tell us what he expects in the coming year. I have no doubt that if the Minister helps the farmers they will do their part in this emergency, whether they are supporters or otherwise of the Government. The farmers are supporters of a Government. It does not matter what Government is in, or who the Minister for Agriculture is, if he will help them out. They want to be helped out as regards manures, and on the question of stall feeding which is necessary to produce the manures they need. They want the Minister to advise them as to how they should conserve the by-products of their crops. If the Minister shows an interest in them, and co-operates with them, he will find that food will be produced by the agricultural community in the coming year to an extent to which it was never produced before.