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Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 22 Mar 1944

Vol. 93 No. 2

Committee on Finance. - Vote 29—Agriculture (Resumed).

Before moving the Adjournment last night we were discussing the two motions relating to dairying. I had stated that we were glad the Minister for Agriculture, for the first time in this House, had indicated that he had a full appreciation of the position of the dairying industry in this country when he said that dairying was the keynote of our live-stock industry, and that the pig and poultry industries were complementary to the dairying industry; that, as a natural corollary, if there was any serious decline in the dairying industry you had there a danger to the whole live-stock economy of the country. For the present, as well as for the future, it is absolutely essential in the interests of the live-stock industry as a whole to organise the dairying industry on more efficient and more scientific lines for the purpose of providing basic stock all over the country as well as dairy produce for our own requirements and for export. We indicated the great potentialities there are for the future in regard to the provision of dairy stock not only for Great Britain, where the consumption of milk is going up, but for the re-stocking of Europe in the post-war period. We suggest, in order to stem any further decline that is likely to happen in the industry in the future, that it is absolutely essential that the present price for milk of 1/- per gallon should be maintained during the summer season.

The Minister indicated that he would welcome constructive suggestions regarding the organisation, or the reorganisation, of any branch of agriculture. So far as dairying is concerned, one of the first difficulties in our view is the scarcity of labour. It has had a very serious reaction on the bigger herds. The smaller herds have been preserved, but the bigger herds have seriously declined owing to the lack of labour. At the present time, up to 90 per cent. of the labour that is employed in providing milk supplies in the dairying districts, is family labour. The Agricultural Wages Act is operating against securring sufficient labour in the dairying districts.

I asked Deputies last night if they were satisfied as to whether we are breeding the right type of dairy stock, whether our dairy stock have declined in recent years, as well as the capacity of our cows to give milk. I think that, in looking over the milk records, we must definitely come to the conclusion that the milking capacity of our cows has declined. That immediately suggests that there must be some biological examination into the way that we are breeding our stock, as well as into the administration of the Live Stock Breeding Act. I have pointed out that that Act was passed by the Oireachtas with the specific object of getting rid of scrub bulls, and, generally, of improving the type of our live stock. It has definitely effected that purpose. To-day, however, in the dairying districts we are judging cattle on conformation only, and milk records are being ignored. Deputy Halliden, in his motion, referred to the necessity of eliminating cows whose milking capacity is very low. We cannot eliminate the poor type of cows wholesale until we first make provision for their substitution. That involves tackling the problem from the point of view of providing a better type of stock. I again stress the importance of encouraging more milk recordings. The Minister told us last night that some 50,000 cows were now recorded. That number represents only 4 per cent. of our cow population. The Minister may say: "What more can we do about it?" I agree that there are certain financial inducements for those who engage in cow testing, but in my opinion a more vigorous policy in regard to cow testing is called for. When we turn to what has been done in that direction in America, Canada and Great Britain, we find that those countries are leading the way. I have here a report of an address that was delivered by Mr. J.L. Davies, the Chief Milk Production Officer in the Ministry of Agriculture in Great Britain.

"Milk Recording a Long-Term Policy", the article is headed, and Mr. Davies says: "Milk recording has become the handmaiden of live-stock improvement." He stressed to his audience that the Government's present policy was quality milk and immediate increase in production, if at all possible. Milk production in Britain was already at a high level— but they aimed even higher. Speaking of producers, Mr. Davies said it was interesting to realise that between 1933 and 1943 the numbers had practically doubled. That meant that almost one out of every two producers had entered dairying in the last ten years. What were these producers before? They were often graziers or store feeders. Quality live stock made best use of land and in the dairy world they could only get quality live stock by recording. He was certain that there was a great future for recording, and that the Ministry's short-term policy would in all respects prove a most beneficial long-term policy in improving the position of dairy farmers, their herds and output, and land. Touching on the subject of dehydration, Mr. Davies concluded by saying that home producers would find high quality fresh milk the best product to compete against likely improvement in milk powders.

There again is stressed the vital importance, if we are going to tackle the problem of establishing a better dairy stock in this country, of basing our breeding policy on milk recording. Even when you do that, as very experienced breeders know quite well, you are often up against disappointments. Possibly a bull bred absolutely on dairy lines, with a record on the dam and sire sides, will prove a failure, and if you get those failures in breeding on well-defined and well-laid-down lines, how much more likely will it be that you cannot get good dairy stock if you do not breed on milk recording lines?

For a long time I have been concerned about the situation in this country, where we are using various breeds indiscriminately, Aberdeen Angus and Herefords. We have indiscriminate crossing, which has produced in a lot of cases a nondescript collection that will inevitably lower the standard of our basic stock, the Shorthorn. That system is creeping into the dairying districts. There are many dairy farmers using Hereford bulls. I have already pointed out that the number of premiums was almost equal to the number granted to double dairy bulls, and that bears out my contention that it is not in the interests of our live stock that we should have that indiscriminate crossing. If they want to breed Herefords, let them breed Herefords, but I suggest we must have more control

Great Britain is out on a big scheme to improve her live stock. What are we doing about it? I take it we are anxious to promote better breeding of our live stock and, if that is so, we must have greater control of animal breeding here. We must prevent the type of operation that is taking place. For some years now there has been too much crossing and that is likely to prove destructive of the basic stock. I think the Aberdeen Angus has done far more harm in that respect than the Hereford. It is true that in certain mountainous districts the Aberdeen Angus may be desirable. It is a hardy type of animal and does well where conditions are severe and food is scarce and difficult to procure. It may be advantageous in certain circumstances to have the Aberdeen Angus, but I suggest that we ought definitely to limit the amount of State assistance that is available for that sort of live-stock breeding.

The Minister must seriously consider stricter supervision and control. It is necessary, I think, that we should keep pace with the countries that are determined on producing a better type of live stock. We have not done anything in that direction for some years, not since the Live-stock Breeding Act was passed. In our circumstances, instead of imitating other countries, we should be leading the world. We must have the facilities, the scientific, the biological knowledge and all the information that is necessary in this connection. This House, I have no doubt, will be most anxious to provide the finance required in any research work that may be considered necessary.

There is another aspect in this connection that is being anxiously pursued, and interesting experiments have been carried out in Russia and America, and more recently in Great Britain. I refer to experiments in artificial insemination. The time has come when we must seriously consider the position and carry out experiments here. Cambridge has taken the matter up very keenly and they have planned to establish a network of 60 centres. They will have a vast scheme for improving the quality of Britain's herds through the medium of artificial insemination.

The matter has been put before the Minister by the Milk Marketing Board. The centres would be staffed by fully trained veterinary officers employed by the board. The bulls used would be of a quality which would surpass anything the ordinary small farmer could afford. It is felt that if artificial insemination is to become an established part of the live-stock policy of the country, then much of the control of the system should be in the hands of the producers themselves.

One thing that must be borne in mind is that, in the breeding of dairying stock, disappointments must be expected. There have been disappointments in the breeding of double dairy bulls from records on both sides, and a good deal of suspicion has been aroused, where failures have occurred, as to whether substitution occurred when the calf was dropped. In that respect I should like to suggest that the earlier we could get calves earmarked the better in order to climinate any doubt that might exist in people's minds as to the possibility of substitution. A calf may be dropped and it may have a bad colour and appearance and the suggestion is that it is changed for another calf. I suggest that more supervision will have to be exercised, because of the disappointments and the likelihood of financial loss in an operation of that sort.

So far as artificial insemination is concerned, it might be suggested that nature may revolt against that sort of thing, but they have been experimenting for some years in America and Russia with extraordinary results. The Agricultural Faculty at Cambridge has taken the matter up and people there are very interested in this matter. They have carried out valuable experimental work within recent years. As I have said, they propose to establish 60 centres. There are certain advantages attaching to this method of producing live stock. In a country such as this, a country of small farmers, where the cow traffic is infinitely greater than in other countries and where that cow traffic results in the spreading of disease, one can see the tremendous advantages that would accrue from the operation of this new idea. One can visualise the tremendous advantages that would result by taking in half a county. For that area you can buy the finest animal that money can command. You can afford to pay ten times as much for an animal and you can be sure of his progeny beforehand and, therefore, you can eliminate doubts and disappointments. I say that breeders in other countries are very keen and that they claim results. Why are we not doing something about it?

That is the Russian idea.

It is the American idea.

The Russian idea.

I do not care what idea it is, if it is a success.

And the Deputy knows that it is a success.

I do not know whether it is or not, but I probably know more about it than Deputy Allen and I probably have read more about it than has Deputy Allen. I am not saying it is a success, but from the information we have so far, and I am sure the Minister is interested in it, I suggest that we should be alive to its possibilities and should be pursuing some experimental work, too. I hope the Minister will take an early opportunity of trying it out in some creamery centre. This House should insist on that, and should insist that we should be alive to the potentialities of whatever discoveries science has made and whatever assistance research has given to agricultural communities in other countries, so far as they can be applied to our economy. An innuendo like Deputy Allen's will not help in that respect.

It is the new technique.

Do not be talking nonsense. The Deputy wants to plod along in the old way. Another problem is seasonal production. If one compares our dairy production curve with those of New Zealand and Denmark, one is immediately struck by the significance of the fact that New Zealand's production curve is practically a straight line. They have steady production all the year round and the same applies to Denmark. It can be suggested that there is no comparision whatever between the conditions in New Zealand and in this country. New Zealand, which has a lovely climate, is a good grass country and it has no winter problem; but Denmark has, and some of the other Baltic countries have as well.

We have never tackled this problem of seasonal production, and it is true, I believe, that it reacts on the milk record. In the dairying countries, they believe the best time to have a cow calving is the month of March. She is coming into the grass season then and will have a full flush of milk, and if you have her in her full flush of milk at that period, her milk yield will be better over the whole period of her lactation. What happens, however, is—I say this without hesitation and it reflects on the dairying districts—that very often the cows are in poor condition. They have been badly wintered and when the grass season comes a good deal of the food consumed goes to body building. The cows are in an emaciated condition, and the body has to be built up first, which operates against a good milk record. With regard to the best time for calving and research done by other countries in that respect, I am interested in an article on milk production by Dr. A. Crichton of the Rowett Research Institute, Scotland, which was published in the Scottish Journal of the Ministry of Agriculture, of July, 1943, Volume 24, No.3. The professor writes:—

"There is a too widely held conception that summer milk is profitable because little or no expense is involved in artificial feeding stuffs, and that the profitableness of winter milk is very doubtful. Some go as far as deliberately to calve as many as possible of their cows in spring; and so have them dry in winter."

Further on, he says:—

"It is a well-established fact that cows which calve in autumn or early winter give more milk over the whole lactation than those which calve in spring. This is due to several reasons. The chief ones are the better preparation of the cow on account of the autumn abundance of natural food of good quality, the consistency of the diet in winter, and the flush which the falling yield gets when the cow goes to grass in spring. It might be thought that by concentration on autumn calving the milk yield in summer would be relatively low, but it is surprising how the total output is maintained on account of the persistency in milking of autumn calvers. The economic fact is that because of a higher yield, a well-maintained summer output and a shorter dry period, the autumn calver at the present price of milk leaves greater profits than does the spring calver."

Again there is one of the best authorities in Scotland who disagrees with our system of spring calving here. It may be that when we were experiencing very low prices, farmers interested in dairying could not afford to buy winter feeding stuffs, but we have now established in this country the fact that the use of silage is very helpful particularly to dairying and we have not done anything about the use of kale or even encouraged it. We know that the dairy farmer in Great Britain relies to a very great extent on the use of kale, and I suggest that we have not done enough here in that respect. If the Minister really believes in what he said last night, that the dairying industry is the keystone of our live-stock industry, if he is a firm believer in that and sincere in his anxiety to preserve the dairying and live-stock industries, he will have to pursue this problem with far more vigour. That is why we say that to stop the rot, to stop the decline in the industry at present, it will be necessary to continue to pay the 1/- and the whole thing will have to be fully examined by, as we suggest, a committee of both Houses.

So far as winter dairying is concerned, I am not in favour of a flat price all the year round. If you want to encourage winter dairying, it is true that you will have to give a preferential price for milk during the winter period, and it may appear to be illogical on my part to argue that the 1/- should be maintained for the summer period. I do not think it is, because it is really designed to guard against a further reduction in the number of cows. We have made mistakes before, and I should like to remind the Minister that in relation to the pig and other industries, we had not the foresight to see that there was going to be a steep decline until it was too late. Let us benefit by that experience and make sure that the decline which many people think will take place in the dairying industry, if we do not maintain a reasonably attractive price for the producer, will not come about.

The Minister referred to diseases, which is a very important consideration. We know that the incidence of tuberculosis, abortion and sterility is on the increase. The incidence of tuberculosis is definitely on the increase, and any man in the export trade will tell you that he gets healthier stock from certain counties than from others. The healthier stock comes notably from the counties in which there is a higher standard of winter feeding, and in those counties in which winter feeding is not carried on so intensively, the incidence of tuberculosis in our herds is greater. I am sorry to say that I believe that applies again to the dairying districts. I am quite prepared to be critical of those people in the dairying districts, who have not done the necessary winter feeding. Something will have to be done in that respect, too. The loss involved in the mortality of young stock is a very substantial national loss. We ought to be concerned not only about the individual losses but about the national loss, and ought to be prepared to expend money on any provision or any research we think necessary.

I pointed out last night that the Canadians were prepared to provide tuberculin free cattle to the British market, and I know that America spent a huge sum of money in order to eradicate T.B. from the herds there. It cost roughly £1 per head of the live-stock population of America to get rid of T.B., and, apart altogether from the tremendous advantage from the point of view of the health of the people, it is calculated that the improvement effected in the live stock was worth whatever it cost to eradicate that disease from the American herds.

The United States and Canada are in a position to-day to provide tuberculin free cattle for the British market. We have not done anything about that yet. I suggest that we want more active attempts to control disease. We must seriously consider a scheme of national health service for the whole live-stock population. If we are to attack the question of having better live stock we must take it up in a constructive way. When dealing with abortion in cattle the Minister referred to Strain 19. He said that he did not see very much difference after some experiments carried out with that and ordinary vaccines. It immunises in the same way. The Americans claim that there is one definite advantage, that there is non-reaction to the agglutination test, and that the calves should be vaccinated between four and eight months old. A blood test should then be taken, and if the vaccine did not "take" the animals should be inoculated again. If the vaccine is what the Americans claim it to be, we should adopt a system of compulsory vaccination of all heifer calves. I wish to direct the Minister's attention to the use of the ordinary vaccine and the preparation of the culture at Thorndale. I understand that if applied for the ordinary vaccine is handed out to any veterinary surgeon without any proof of a blood test having been taken. As far as I know Great Britain and America insist on a blood test by the veterinary officer applying for the vaccine in order to prove that abortion is present. If it is ordinary abortion, and non-contagious, vaccine is provided to inject an animal with the live germ. We should insist on the precautions that are taken in other countries and, at least, when vaccine is applied for there should be proof that a blood test has been taken, and that disease is actually present in the herd that is about to be inoculated.

In Great Britain and other countries they have arranged for what I call a national health service scheme for the live-stock population. I suggest that that is a scheme we should have under active consideration. As these matters require very careful examination, we should have a long-term policy as far as the live-stock industry is concerned. There has been no evidence, as far as this House is concerned, of a long-term approach to the live-stock industry. The responsibility rests upon this House to see that we are not left behind in the post-war period. We may have breathing space before the countries now involved in war have time to withdraw from the position in which they find themselves. In any case, we have three or four years to play with. Let us make sure that we make proper use of all the advantages we have in respect of time. Information reaching this country goes to show that Canada, the United States, and Great Britain are particularly active. I read an extract from a speech of Mr. Hudson, the Minister of Agriculture, in Great Britain, in which he stated that at one time they led the world in the excellence of their live stock, but he had reluctantly to admit, from information he had of the position in the United States, Great Britain was no longer the leader. However, in Great Britain they are alive to that situation and they are determined to build up a better type of live stock. Let us do the same.

In winding up last night the Minister devoted some time to crops and to cultivation and gave aggregate figures to prove that farmers are better off now than before the war. That is poor consolation. The Minister need not have gone to the trouble of proving that. We cannot claim very much credit for what has been done, during a most favourable period for food production, by saying that farmers are better off now than pre-war. Having accepted the Minister's claim, if we turn to the figures taken from the Trade Journal we find that there is a progressive decline in aggregate production, and accordingly we cannot be as complacent as the Minister if we are to take our responsibilities seriously. Clann na Talmhan had a motion affecting tillage before this House some time ago, but it fell through, because it was not discussed and because the Minister had not the courtesy to reply to the arguments. The proposal was to provide a subsidy of £3 an acre for tillage land. At the time it was stated that Great Britain was making similar provision. That is not so. Great Britain is providing a subsidy for potato growing and for broken up grass land, but a general subsidy on all tillage is not provided. In any case the proposal would involve an expenditure of over £10,000,000. Even if the Farmers' Party were Government, having in view the provision that has to be made in the Budget, in the Book of Estimates and the Central Fund to provide for the public services, I suggest that this country is not in a position to provide an extra £10,000,000. Where there is a subsidy in operation in Great Britain the price of wheat is lower than it is here, so that whatever they gain by the subsidy is set off by the fact that they have a lower price for the cereals they grow. I prefer to see farmers paid an economic price for the article they produce rather than give the impression to the public and to the tax payers that an inefficient industry has to be bolstered up by a subsidy out of taxation. The agricultural community ought to claim the same right as any other industrialist in this country—a price for their produce covering the cost of production, plus a fair margin. That is all we want. We do not expect to be bolstered up out of taxation with subsidies or anything else. We claim that just right of the primary producer.

There are two aspects of this whole problem of food production. There is the immediate problem of food production for the emergency period, and there is the post-war problem. So far as the immediate problem is concerned, we cannot boast of our achievement, and the reason is that we lack organised effort. There was no systematic approach to the problem of production in this country. The Minister and the Government relied on a few food meetings down the country and a few broadcasts from Radio Eireann. Whatever effort there was, was a bureaucratic effort—sending inspectors from Merrion Street to compel farmers under a threat of prosecution and so on to produce food and ignoring their difficulties with regard to equipment and credit. When we compare that with the methods adopted and the results achieved in other countries we should feel ashamed of ourselves. There they rely on the experience of a practical man to organise in each particular county. They built up round each county committee of agriculture the necessary organisation, with the power to borrow money, with inspectorial staffs to see that the work was carried out, and technical staffs to give the necessary technical advice where experience was lacking.

We had no difficulty regarding the tillage counties. We had a tradition there and we had equipment there. We have not, however, made any attempt to make whatever equipment we have in the country more mobile. Any machinery and equipment that came in last year and that is likely to come in this year, so far as any information we have got from the Minister goes, are to be attached to private individuals over whom we have no control and who may use it for their own purposes or give it to their own particular friends, so that the man who is in a very difficult position may be ignored. I do not see why what they have done in other countries with success could not work here. If you attach that sort of equipment to a county committee of agriculture, it becomes mobile over the county. The county committee in charge of food production in a particular county would see that the machinery was directed to the districts where it was urgently required. It could be transferred from north to south and from east to west of a county at will. I want to stress the mobility of that arrangement where you are suffering from a shortage of equipment. The moment you tie it up to an individual in a district, it will only operate in the mere locality and, if there is a particular shortage some miles away, the equipment is immobilised; it does not travel to those districts.

If we had the confidence to rely on practical capable men who had proved their ability to produce food and let them scheme for the production of that food in their own county and put the responsibility on them—if they held regular weekly or fortnightly meetings, the meetings would be a source of propaganda and would afford local publicity for each county— we would inevitably be bound to get results. But the whole scheme of production here is hatched out in Merrion Street by beardless youths who have got a degree in the Albert College. While they have technical experience, they have little or no practical experience. While it is true to say that a considerable number of them are very sympathetic so far as the farmers' problems are concerned, there is quite a number of them unsympathetic.

There are very serious provisions in the Compulsory Tillage Order, and there again complaints have been made that there is no court of appeal. I do not want to "let out" the man who wants to evade his responsibility so far as food production is concerned. But I was told recently of a case where a man wanted to break up fresh land on one side of the road and suggested to the tillage inspector that the land on the other side was better accommodation land for him, as he had a dairy herd and the water facilities there were better and the approach was easier from his cowsheds, etc. But the inspector was not impressed and he insisted on the man breaking up the accommodation land. That man had no court of appeal. Every individual has a fundamental right of appeal. Even a criminal has the right of appeal. Therefore, in respect of the operation of the Compulsory Tillage Order there should be some right of appeal from the bureaucrats.

Would that provision require legislation?

No. The provisions of the Compulsory Tillage Order are varied every year according to the circumstances of the time. However, I think that whatever failure has resulted from the operation of the Tillage Order has resulted from our whole line of approach to the problem and from the methods adopted. Again, we have the compulsory growing of wheat on every type of land regardless of its altitude. We know that on high altitudes the land is highly acid. Once you attempt to grow wheat on land the hydrogen ion concentration of which is 5 P.H. you will get very bad results. You may get straw, but you will not get satisfactory grain return. You will get a good crop of oats on land of that type. I suggested a very simple solution to the Minister which he promised to consider, namely, that any land above the 500 contour line should be excluded. It would be very easy with the aid of a map to exclude the townlands over that line and not force the people to grow a crop that from the word "go" would be a failure because of the acid condition of the soil.

As to the whole problem of post-war production and the speeding up of production, as I pointed out last night, if we are to continue to provide for expanding social services and if the agricultural industry has to provide foreign exchange—if there is any problem about foreign exchange—the agricultural community will have to ensure that foreign exchange will be used, first of all, to get raw material for the agricultural industry. The agricultural community ought to have first claim on any goods that are obtained by foreign exchange provided by the export of agricultural produce.

I have suggested to the Minister before that now is the time to make a land utilisation survey. I do not think we have got very far with the argument, although I know that there are some scientists in this country who are particularly keen that that should be done and that the Government should be preparing a staff to tackle that problem immediately. Of course, we can never hope to make agriculture an exact science; but the whole trend of science to-day is towards eliminating any risk that the farmer has to take, to make sure that the raw material that is going to produce crops and grass and maintain live stock is as good as scientists can make it; that any deficiency may be made good so that you can give the farmer accurate information. It may be argued by some of the old school that you cannot simulate in the laboratory actual field conditions; that bacteriological activity and ever-changing atmospheric conditions create varying conditions in the soil under normal field conditions which cannot be simulated in the laboratory. I think it may well be argued that science has got over that to a very great extent. The results which have been obtained in other countries are conclusive proof that that is so. Some of the greatest scientists to-day in Great Britain are quite satisfied that that is so, and it is an accepted fact in Great Britain that American is very much in advance of Great Britain in that respect.

I have here "Principles of Land Utilisation", by L. Dudley Stamp, D.Sc., who is Director of the Land Utilisation Survey of Britain. He says:—

"Whilst it might be true to say that the task of national planning is primarily to determine the optimum use of every acre of the country, no plan can ever be final and complete, because the land and its people are dynamic, not static, factors, and because ‘optimum' use must necessarily change from decade to decade with prevailing economic conditions. Clearly ‘optimum' use of many areas is not the same in time of war as in time of peace, but there is an enormous difference between insisting on a rigid plan of land-use and of policy of laissez faire which involves the complete destruction of a national asset.”

Further down he says:—

"The so-called practical man is apt to decry the value of surveys of all types, forgetting that every great advance in technical progress is made possible by the ultimate sublimation of an immense number of detailed experiments and investigations. In this sense a soil survey is a major desideratum which cannot but be of permanent value. On the other hand American experience suggests that even when the soil survey has been completed there will remain to be done the correlation with actual and potential land use. Partly for this reason ecologists and botanists headed by Dr. F. E. Clements in America have urged that a detailed survey of natural vegetation will afford an index of the potential use of the land covered by each type of vegetation.... To the eye of the ecologist a stretch of heather indicates a certain range of conditions of soil, temperature, rainfall, drainage, and other factors, and suggests certain potential utilisations which may be quite different from those on a neighbouring hill slope covered with coarse grass, rushes, sedges and bracken.”

He goes on to say that Sir George Stapledon, with a Mr. Davies, made a vegetation survey of Great Britain in 1939, and he says:

"The survey was finished in the late summer of 1940 and it is impossible to calculate the addition to the nation's larder and storehouse where the advice provided has been followed. It is equally impossible to calculate the loss where the advice has not been followed: we are too apt to forget that a 10 per cent. increase in yield on the land which was ploughed in 1939 is equivalent to the total yield which can be expected from ploughing an additional 1,000,000 acres."

The advantage in all this scientific approach to the problem of the proper utilisation of our soil is this: we are well aware of the fact that very high yields are obtained by the best farmers in this country, and that what is pulling down our average is not so much the number of complete failures that occur as the number of partial failures that occur. If the application of science to this problem could eliminate the partial failures then we would have secured a very definite advance. I am convinced, in the matter of the production of many crops, that it is the small deficiency which makes the difference. We know, for instance, that when people are growing beet in soil deficient in boron that deficiency will create crown rot and very substantially reduce the yield. That deficiency can be corrected by the application of a stone and a half of borax to the acre. Calcium deficiency will give you blackleg in beet which will practically wipe out the crop. The application of calcium of lime there will correct that condition. We know that manganese deficiency in certain soils will give you grey speck in oats, and the application of a small quantity of manganese to that type of land will eliminate the possibility of that disease.

In the last issue of the Minister's journal there is a very interesting experiment by Mr. Brickley, which was carried out in South Kildare, regarding potash deficiency in a certain type of land. There he proved beyond doubt that, where a potash deficiency occurs in that type of soil, it results in a browning condition in the potato crop, which practically wipes out the crop; you will have a very low yield. The correction of the potash deficiency will put the whole thing right. He emphasised this in his experiment and he proved it conclusively, that, especially now when we have no potash supplies, if you attempt under those conditions on that type of soil to increase the nitrogen and phosphates in the soil you will accentuate that condition with disastrous results.

With regard to this matter of soil survey, I have heard it argued by a man in a very responsible position in the Minister's Department that it is an easy problem and an advantage in the steppes of Russia to make a soil survey, because whatever conditions obtained on each steppe went right through thousands of acres of land. The argument was absolutely illogical, because where it is a relatively simple matter there is no need to give that detailed attention to it, but we here have a condition occurring in the soil in this country that is every varying from field to field. The treatment you apply to the soil where you have an acid condition is altogether different from what should be applied to the other conditions. That is the reason why we must have, in my opinion, mapped up and properly typed a detailed report on the soil conditions of this country, showing the deficiencies that exist and providing the necessary correctives.

Once that is done, any discoveries made by scientists ten or 20 years hence in relation to any particular type of soil can be related to that soil wherever it occurs. You can simply tell the farmer: "It has been discovered that certain treatment should be pursued with regard to the production of certain crops on your soil," because the Department already knows from the survey that has been made that that type of soil exists on his particular farm. Our scientists to-day do not know where the particular types of soil occur. We have not attempted to collect that information. There have been tremendous strides in recent years with regard to soil science, which is an immense study in itself. The House will appreciate that. So far as our scientists go, their knowledge is up to date in every way, within the limits of laboratory, but so far as field conditions are concerned the facilities are not there for the men who are working on this whole problem.

Are we going to wait too long in that respect, or are we going to attack this problem in a constructive way? Are we going to benefit from the experience of other countries which have broken new ground, countries which are pioneers in this respect? I think the Minister for Agriculture is very indifferent to the whole thing. He has said that there is something in it. That is his attitude—there is something in it. But surely he ought to get his Department to study the problem? The work that has been done by Albert College, in my opinion, and the knowledge that has been gained by very able scientists in this country is not available to the average farmer at all. He is completely ignorant about it. The knowledge is not disseminated, that scientific knowledge which is so vital if we are to step up production and effect any improvement in our agricultural economy. That, again, has to be put right. The Minister talked about the amount of money that we are spending on agricultural education. That money is being completely wasted if the benefits accruing from research and from agricultural science generally are not getting back to every individual in the country. We ought to be deeply concerned about planning for the future a better and a more efficient system. If the Minister says that we are doing quite well, then, in my opinion, that attitude of his is not good enough. I think we will have to do a lot better. We have problems and evils in our social system that need to be corrected and solved. These problems can only be corrected when we improve our capacity to increase the national income.

The Minister last evening invited constructive suggestions. We should take him at his word because this is a time for thinking over those matters and of considering what our position is going to be as well as the type of competition that we are likely to have to face in the future. Above all, we should never lose sight of what other countries are planning and doing. This is not a political matter. It is one that affects the prosperity of the country as a whole. It is one that concerns all Parties in the House. We are all interested in what can be done to improve the general prosperity, and so far as that is concerned, we should unite in strength and wisdom to bring it about.

Deputy Hughes has given us a very exhaustive survey of the whole position of agriculture. It is not my intention, as far as possible, to touch on any matter that he has so ably dealt with. Of course, at the present time, the eyes of the nation are turned on the farmers and their workers because on the efficiency, energy and sacrifices of the farmers depend the extent to which the country will be safeguarded from starvation and cold. So that we may get the best from the farmers it is essential that some stimulus be given to them to aid production. The stimulus given already by the Government has been very tardy and parsimonious. The farmer, like every other human being, requires encouragement. The encouragement that he needs in this case is a fair and adequate price for his services to the country, a price that will enable him to cover his increased costs of production and to make provision, as it were, for the rainy day that is bound to come when this world war is over: something that will help him to pay the debts which he incurred during the economic war. What has been given to the farmer was given very slowly and in a parsimonious fashion after a great deal of pressure from all directions. The agitation for increased prices for the farmer's produce is very widespread. Efforts are being made in some quarters to distort it into what one may call a political campaign. As Deputy Hughes has said, there is no politics in this business at all. It is simply an agitation to help the producers to go one better, to give them some adequate compensation for the work they are doing.

The Minister for Agriculture said last night that dairying was the keystone of the agricultural industry. I am afraid that a great many of the farmers engaged in it have come to regard dairying as the "Cinderella" of the agricultural industry. The Minister said that in 1939 the average price paid by the creameries for milk was 5.4d. per gallon. He did not tell us that, at that time, it had been proved conclusively that the cost of producing a gallon of milk on the farm was 8½d. Therefore, the farmers at that time were actually producing an essential food at 3d. a gallon below the cost of production. The Minister also said that the present price is 1/- per gallon. "Consequently," he concluded, "the price of milk has been doubled since the beginning of the war." I do not think that is a fair inference because if farmers were getting the cost of production in 1939-40, and allowing themselves no profit at all, the price to them at that time should have been 8½d. per gallon for the milk they were supplying to the creameries. The price that is now demanded of 1/- a gallon is not too much, seeing that the costs of production have gone up considerably. These costs have gone up because of the fact that proper feeding is not available for our dairy cattle. Fertilisers are not available for the production of better grasses for our cattle while the price of dairy utensils has increased by 200 per cent., and even 300 per cent.

The greatest snag of all is the lack of sufficient labour to milk our dairy cows. That is becoming a growing menace in the dairying industry. Even at the price of 1/- per gallon that we are looking for it would take the best energy and the most scientific methods of our farmers to produce sufficient milk for the nation owing to the fact that there is a shortage of people willing to milk cows. The result is that a great many farmers are obliged to put their calves under the cows, and to keep a few cows for their own use because the workers will not milk cows on Sundays. It is only by farmers working 13 or 14 hours a day on seven days of the week that they can produce milk and butter. In view of the hardship—I may say the slavery—which that involves, there is a general demand for 1/- a gallon for milk during the summer months. There is little use in giving farmers 1/- a gallon for milk during the winter months because during those months they produce only 6 per cent. or 7 per cent, of the milk that is produced during the peak periods of the year, whereas in the summer months you have a full supply of milk and that is the time when the producers should benefit. Consequently, this agitation for 1/- a gallon is not a matter of politics; it is not, as some Minister indicated a short time ago, a political ramp or propaganda. Somebody said that the Government cannot give 1/- a gallon because if they did the farmers might say that they were responsible for getting that. I think that is very contemptible; it is a very debasing statement for anybody to make, and it has been made by a responsible Minister in the country. Methods of that sort are to be deplored. I put it to the Minister that if the dairying industry continues to decline, he must accept responsibility. If there is a shortage of milk and butter, which the people in the towns and cities need so much, and if there are deaths or diseases because of malnutrition, owing to the fact that the people have not sufficient fats, the responsibility will rest on the Government's shoulders.

In most other countries, as Deputy Hughes said, efforts are being made by long-term policies and by paying higher prices, to encourage milk production. We are not doing enough here. Mr. Hudson, in January last, at a meeting of farmers in England, very properly stated that the increase in milk production in October, November and December was considerable and for the remainder of the year he expected an all-round increase of 10 per cent. I wish we could be in the same position. I am afraid the position here will become so serious that instead of anticipating eight ounces of butter for the people next winter, we will probably be giving them two ounces or maybe three. We want a stimulus for the dairy farmers and I hope it will be given ungrudgingly.

The Minister referred to the cow-testing movement yesterday. There is no other activity in connection with the dairying industry so full of possibilities as that of cow-testing. The average yield of our cows at present would be about 380 gallons, but the average yield of the cows under test in the cow-testing associations is about 550 gallons, representing an increase of about 170 gallons. That 170 gallons at 9d. a gallon for 1,250,000 cows would bring in a very handsome sum. Therein lies a potential source of wealth for our dairy farmers, if they got proper encouragement to take up the scheme wholeheartedly. Year in and year out we have been urging the Department to formulate attractive cow-testing schemes. It has been done in England. We have only 4 per cent. of our cows under test although we have been doing the work for the past 25 years. The English people at first did not take the matter up as wholeheartedly as we did, but they began to get interested and within a few years they have practically 50 per cent of their cows under test.

If we had 50 per cent. on test instead of 4 per cent. and if that percentage of our cattle was yielding 550 gallons a year, it would be a fine source of wealth for our people, apart from the aspect of providing valuable food for the poor in the towns and cities. But the proper encouragement is not being given in the direction of cow-testing schemes. There has been no increase in the number of cows under test. I must say the Government have barely tolerated the scheme. They have refused to adopt a more popular scheme. I do not know why they have adopted that attitude, and why they have refused to give any encouragement to the cow-testing supervisors.

Last week I asked the Minister would there be any chance of giving a bonus to the supervisors, and his answer was that the only way to increase their salaries was to let them increase the number of cows under test and in that way they would get an increased grant from the members and from the Department. I think that is very unfair. I might as well say to the industrial workers, when they ask for a bonus, that if they increase their output they will get an increased salary. That was the answer given to the cow-testing supervisors. The result is that a great many of those men are inclined to leave the scheme altogether. They were the pioneers in the cow-testing movement and at the moment they have a miserable income of about 32/- a week. They start work at 6 o'clock in the morning; they have to cycle eight or ten miles to a herd, and afterwards settle down to the testing of the milk. In that way they sometimes work 13 or perhaps 15 hours a day. It is a whole-time job, although some people do not think so. I have known supervisors to cycle 3,000 or 5,000 miles in a year in the course of their work. I have tried to get bicycle tyres for some of them, but even in that direction there was no encouragement.

At one time these supervisors had an opportunity of being taken on as instructors, but at present, if there are vacancies, the percentage of supervisors taken on is very small. I appeal to the Government to give some encouragement to those worthy men. If the dairying industry and the cow-testing movement are to be worked at all, let them be worked by worth-while men at worth-while salaries. Otherwise, there will be no encouragement and I think that instead of having the dairying industry the keystone industry, unless it gets some encouragement it will continue as the "Cinderella" of the agricultural industry.

The Minister said the farmers are better off now than they were at any time since 1920. The larger farmers with the wide acres, who are able to grow wheat, are better off. The middle-class farmers, the tillage and dairy farmers, are perhaps better off, but they have nothing to boast about. On the other hand, there is a very high percentage of the farmers who are definitely worse off. I refer to the small farmers living on the hillsides. They have nothing to make money except the drop of milk and the calf. Up to a certain period they had their pigs and their poultry. When Professor Murphy was making a survey in West Cork over 60 farms, he ascertained that the income of the farmers there was made up to the extent of practically 50 per cent. by the sale of pigs and poultry produce. Pigs and poultry have now practically gone because these men cannot grow sufficient foodstuffs to maintain pigs or poultry. They have nothing then but the milk. If there are numbers of farmers who are very well off and who have made money during the emergency, I say deliberately and with a full knowledge of the conditions that there is a high percentage immensely worse off than ever they were before.

The Minister said yesterday that one could prove anything by figures. Of course one can and, by speaking in millions, he proved that the farmers were better off now than before. I am afraid they are not. A great many farmers during the past year bought up heifers with the intention of disposing of them in-calf for the dairying industry. What is the present position? Those heifers are a drug on the market. I was present at two fairs recently, at one of which was an auction of in-calf heifers, and the best heifer there would not make £15. The others were unsold and were returned home, so that the farmers are not quite as well off as most people think.

Even if some of them are better off, most people forget that the farmer is the one man in the community who has no fixed salary or wage, that his income is dependent on a great many factors, from the weather down to soil conditions, and that, while the civil servant, the professional man and others get their salaries no matter what kind the weather is, the farmer's salary is dependent on the whether, on soil and climatic conditions and many factors of that kind. Therefore, the farmers live in a state of insecurity, and if at present some of them enjoy a little prosperity, they are always afraid that the day is coming, and coming quickly, when there will be a slump in the price of their produce and when their incomes will go down. These things make the farmer a little conservative in his outlook, and naturally so. It is traditional that these cycles of prosperity and depression come and, consequently, if we are to stabilise the industry, the Government should embark on a bold, long-term policy such as that which is in operation in England and other countries.

When the Minister says that the Compulsory Tillage Order will remain in operation for at least five years more, he should also be able to tell the farmers: "Breed your best cattle. Keep your best heifers and you will get so much a gallon for your milk in three, four or five years' time." It may be 10½d. a gallon at present and it may rise to 1/-, but as matters stand at present there may be a slump. It takes two-and-a-half to three years before a dairy cow will produce her first calf, and if a farmer starts out to-day or at any other period with a number of promising heifers in-calf, it may happen that before they are at maturity, the dairy industry may have gone still further down the decline. It is, therefore, very essential that there should be a long-term policy of guaranteed, or almost guaranteed, prices, so as to encourage the farmer to breed the best cattle, to keep only the best cattle, and to produce the milk and butter so very essential for every section of the community.

The Minister spoke of agricultural education and he paid a tribute to the work done by the winter agricultural classes and by the agricultural instructors. I wish to endorse his remarks in that respect. I am aware that very valuable work is being done in that direction, but it is not nearly sufficient. Our boys are obliged to attend the primary schools until they reach the age of 14 years. After that, they are no longer inclined to go to school. There is no further inducement to them to continue their studies, and between that time and the time they enter the agricultural classes at 16 or 18 years, there is a gulf which, to my mind, is responsible for the present tendency to leave the land and to take up occupations in the towns and cities.

At the age of 14, our boys are at the most plastic period of their lives; their characters are being formed; and it is at that period that they are allowed to run loose, as it were, without discipline, control, guidance or education of any kind. Until such time as the Government, through the Department of Agriculture or otherwise, makes some arrangement for the giving of instruction to those boys, the conditions of the rural population will go from bad to worse. I hope that time will come and will come very soon because, to my mind, it is the kernel of much of the trouble and it is responsible for much of the anxiety of our people to leave the land. The land is associated in their minds with mud and misery and they are all, the sons and daughters of the farmers, not to speak of the workers, inclined to get away from it.

The Minister has asked for suggestions and, as he has described dairying as the keystone of the agricultural industry, the first suggestion I would make to him is that he should give the stimulus to the dairy farmers for which they are asking at present, so that they, their workers and their families will be able to carry on the strenuous work week in and week out of producing milk and butter for the nation. We are anxious also that the Minister should go more closely and more quickly into veterinary research work. At present thousands of cattle suffer from mastitis, contagious abortion, sterility and T.B.

It is estimated, on a very conservative basis, that a sum of at least £7,000,000 is lost every year by the farmers through the incidence of these diseases amongst their cattle. There can be no mistake in that figure. I understand, and we must complain, and complain grievously, that the Department is not doing enough to stem the colossal losses which the farmers suffer in that respect. I am glad to be able to say that some of the co-operative societies through the country are taking the matter up, and that they realise that if they can stem some of the losses, it will be for the betterment of the dairying industry. I hope to see that, with the encouragement of the Department, a veterinary surgeon will be appointed to the staff of every co-operative creamery in the very near future. It would familiarise the people with the uses of the "vet." Lectures could be given at the creameries and the services of the "vet" could be availed of at a nominal fee, when such a scheme is carried out on co-operative lines.

I hope the Minister will take the matter up as early as possible because the losses are colossal. I sincerely trust he will encourage the cow-testing movement which, as I said, has great possibilities. Thousands of pounds can be turned into the pockets of the farmers, as a result of scientific cattle breeding, better heifers, better cows, better dairy bulls may be provided, and more systematic methods of farming can be brought into operation. Where this system of cow-testing is carried out properly there is in the farmers' homes a most valuable source of education for the boys and girls. I appeal to the Minister to take this matter in hand at once, to give the proper encouragement and to devise a scheme, such as the elaborate one put before him from time to time, which will encourage the cow-testing movement here as has been done in England, where at present they have 50 per cent. of their cows on test. I hope I have not kept the House too long, but I wish to point out very emphatically that some steps must be taken to arrest the decline in the dairy industry, the first step being the stimulus. I speak of, and the next step will be an effort to get rid of some of the dud cows we have in every herd as may be known from the cow-testing associations. A great many of the cows I speak of are absolute pensioners and a dead loss to the farmers. It would be a very good thing if they could be eliminated, but as you know there is a tradition among Irish farmers that if they start selling away their cows, even though they be uneconomic cows, the rumour may go around that the farmer concerned is not doing so well; that he is in difficulties.

What we want is that some scheme of loans would be devised whereby when a farmer sells off some of these uneconomic cows, loans would be available for him to replenish the herd with cows that would be better both for milk and for beef. These loans are very essential because the one branch of the industry that is carying for capital at the moment is the dairying industry. Now, there should be no trouble in providing that capital. The money is available; as a matter of fact it is begging for investment, and it could be got at a comparatively low rate of interest. I think that money could not be invested or spent in a better way than by investing it in the provision of cheap loans at whatever rate of interest might be charged. We would be investing money in an industry which the Minister for Agriculture describes as the keystone of the basic industry of this country.

I hope that the time is coming when that keystone will not crumble any more. If it does, I am afraid that the responsibility must be placed on the shoulders of the people who are letting the thing stagnate by not adopting the methods suggested to them in this country, methods which have met with such great success in other countries. That is all I have to say and I hope I have not kept the House too long. I trust that when the Minister for Agriculture comes to reply that his reply will be a message of cheer to the dairy farmers of the country.

There was one statement made by the last speaker to which I would like to refer for a moment, and that is in connection with agricultural education. He said, and very rightly so, that there was a gap from 14 years, when the child left the primary school, and that those years in between 14 and 16 or 17 were wasted. That is so, but I am sure Deputy Halliden is aware of this fact: that, unfortunately, the people who have taken the most short-sighted view of raising the school-leaving age from 14 to 16 are the people whom it is hitting hardest, and that is the agricultural community themselves. I have heard farmers in the country and I have heard the farmers' representatives in this House oppose any attempt or movement which was made towards raising the school-leaving age from the present miserably low level of 14 years up to 16.

They are two different things, of course.

Would the Deputy explain?

At the age of 14 a child can leave the primary school. The farmers, and perhaps some of the workers, too, are very anxious at that period to have these children for work. What I would like to have done is that they would be there, as it were, to work for their parents—some of them, if they are of the age or the ability—but that some provision should be made for having them educated for a certain number of hours every week at a proper school.

Yes, but of course the Deputy has mended his hand very considerably from what he said originally.

No, I did not go any further.

But the Deputy's attempt at correction has merely emphasised what I was going to say. Does the Deputy—and I put this, if I may, particularly to Deputy Halliden —does he believe that it is in the interests of the child and in the interests of the father, whether he is farmer or worker, that the child should be made available for labour at 14 years of age? Does the Deputy also believe, in his experience and his knowledge, that the child who has been taught under the present system in our primary schools up to the age of 14 years—under the present system which has no agricultural bias whatever, no more than it would have here in the City of Dublin —that that child is being fitted to take advantage of any education either part-time or full-time between 14 or 16? He knows quite well, of course, that he is not.

Is Deputy Halliden satisfied that our present system of teaching in the primary schools in the rural areas is a satisfactory system?

But does the Deputy know that 95 per cent. of the children in rural areas never get any other kind of education once they reach the age of 14?

The Deputy who is now speaking is more painfully aware of that than Deputy Halliden is.

Perhaps not.

It may be so. I do not want to go into personal matters, but it is because I have such personal knowledge of this particular subject that I speak so strongly about it and because I am hopeful that sometime—I hope very soon—something will be done to see that the children of farmers and labourers will get a better chance of education than they have been getting up to this.

I have been advocating that all my life.

Yes, and that is why I have been addressing my remarks particularly to Deputy Halliden. I think there is very little between us on this subject notwithstanding our exchanges or interruptions. I think we are practically agreed on it. I want to go back for a moment to the Minister's speech. The Minister made a very exhaustive statement when introducing his Estimate and my only complaint about the Minister's opening speech is that he dwelt rather on the parts of his Estimate which, though important no doubt in themselves and very important in normal times, are not so important under present circumstances, and that he devoted very little time comparatively to vital subjects.

As Deputy Halliden has said, the Minister referred to the dairying industry as being the keystone of our whole agricultural economy, but he did not go out of his way to explain to the House how loose that particular keystone has been over a number of years. He did not explain that it was getting more loose every day until it had come to the point when it was now threatening the whole structure. The Minister did not tell us what he was going to do to secure that keystone. The Minister went on to tell us how highly gratified he was with the tillage situation, and he expressed his confidence from what he had seen throughout the country that we would, in the coming year, be independent of outside supplies. I sincerely hope that the Minister is right.

I would be far more inclined to believe the Minister that the position was as good as he thought it was if there had not been a blunder of the first magnitude in connection with the most vital part of our whole tillage problem, and that is with regard to seed wheat. When the Estimate for this Department for last year was under discussion in this House some time last autumn, during the very harvest operations, I expressed to the Minister, from the information at my disposal, my fears as to the wheat seed position. I told the Minister that I was satisfied that there was not anything like an adequate supply of first-class winter wheat seed available. The Minister, in the airy way that he adopts sometimes, brushed that aside and said that he was perfectly satisfied from the information he had that there were adequate supplies of first-quality winter wheat seed available. That statement was not true at the time; everybody knows now that it was not true.

What has happened in the last three or four weeks? At the very beginning, I might say, of the spring wheat seed season the majority of the seed merchants in this country found themselves either without spring seed or with supplies that were wholly inadequate to meet the situation. The situation became so bad that the Government had to release from an iron ration Canadian Manitoba wheat in a quantity sufficient to meet whatever the seed requirements would be. To-day we are in the position that practically over the whole of the State farmers are told that the only spring seed available is this Canadian Manitoba seed. Farmers know nothing about it; they have no previous experience of it; they have no knowledge as to whether it is suitable to our soil or climate; they have no knowledge as to whether they will get a yield of five or 20 barrels per acre. The consequence is that they are very reluctant to sow it and are only sowing it in most cases at the point of compulsion. I suggest that this situation should not have arisen and need not have arisen. I suggest that, if the Government and the State expect farmers to do their duty and to provide adequate supplies of food, the Government themselves ought not to fall down in connection with their share of the work.

The position in this country, so far as seed wheat is concerned, at least so far as the principal wheat-growing counties are concerned, is fairly simple. In the principal wheat-growing counties, where you have good land, we have one principal variety of winter seed, namely, Queen Wilhelmina. Then there is another variety —Pajberg. There were not sufficient quantities of either one or the other to meet the requirements this year. So far as spring varieties are concerned, we have now reached the position that there is only one variety that is worth talking of, or one variety in which the farmers have full confidence, and that is the variety known as Atle. I do not blame the Government, and I do not blame the Department, for the fact that there were not sufficient quantities of good winter seed available, because, on account of the particularly wet harvest last year, I do not believe that sufficient quantities of winter seed of a first-class quality could have been got out of last year's harvest. But I do say that supplies adequate to meet all the demands that could be made for spring wheat could have been there.

What is the Government machinery in connection with the assembling and the treatment of seed? They have what is known as the Seed Assemblers' Association and, so far as I know, that association consists, in the main, if not altogether, of what I might call without being in any way offensive to these men, Dublin shopkeepers. These men, of course, are merely retailers. They do not buy the seed themselves, in the first instance. They have not the storage capacity and they have not the drying plants necessary. The principal purchasers, the people who purchase and select the seed, the people who dry the seed and process it and store it are only in this association to a very limited extent, if at all. The big purchasers, the people who dry the seed and who have to get it in the first instance, get no guarantee or no rebate in connection with seed which is unsold: I mean for wheat which is bought as seed and stored and dried and kept as seed and which is over and above the quantity ultimately sold. But, if you are a member of the Seed Assemblers' Association, and if you purchase or assemble or store a certain amount of seed over and above what you ultimately sell, you get a rebate from the Government.

The man down the country who pays an extra 2/6 for each barrle of seed, if he has any left over, is told: "You can sell that to the miller at the milling price, not the seed price." The result is that those buyers buy only in the big wheat-growing districts where you get the best wheat and the best seed, and they buy only sufficient to meet the requirements in their own immediate district and there is no surplus to be transferred to the other districts where they require good seed grown on good land.

I want to get some assurance from the Minister on this matter. I have raised it every year for the last three or four years. I do not want to say: "I told you so", but, it so happens, that what I have put before the Minister has turned out to be true on every occasion. I am afraid—and I have reason for saying this—that, as a result of there not being sufficient spring seed of a high germination available in this country in the last six weeks, there is a lot of wheat gone into the ground that will not give a large return. I want the Minister to tell us with regard to this very important matter what his proposals are; what plans, if any, he has; and what scheme he is considering with relation to procuring from this year's harvest the seed supplies which we will require for next year's crops.

I want to know whom the Minister consults on those matters. I want to repeat that I do not say this in any offensive sense, but is the Minister taking advice solely from Dublin traders or Dublin shopkeepers, or does he seek his information from the people who are dealing with the grain from the moment it passes into the farmers' hands in the spring until it passes back into the agents' or the millers' hands in the following September or October, as the case may be? I want to suggest here in this House that a Dublin seed merchant— I do not care how capable he is, nor am I concerned very much with the volume of his trade—whose knowledge of wheat and wheat seed is confined to what he sees of it on his counter is not the man best fitted to advise the Minister on this question of seed, or on the question as to the quantity of seed which would have to be set aside to meet the following year's requirements.

For instance, last harvest, that man could not tell the Minister what the man living in the country could have told him—that, as a consequence of the bad weather, the amount of winter wheat suitable for seed was very limited; that, as a consequence of that again, fewer farmers than ever were keeping their own seed, and, therefore, there would be a far bigger demand for the seed in the hands of the seed assemblers; that, further to that, as a consequence of the farmers becoming more enlightened as to the necessity for having their seed tested, more tests were made of their own seed, and that in most cases they found on test that the seed was not fit to be put into the ground. I am sure the House will be amazed to hear this—it sounds almost incredible—that samples of wheat which were sent to testing stations were returned on test as low as 23 germination.

The farmers and their workers have been asked to make an immense effort in this crisis. Having regard to all the difficulties in connection with the shortage of labour in many counties, the shortage of machinery, the difficulty if not the impossibility of obtaining parts for those machines, and the very great cost—the Minister might keep this in his mind when he is talking about profits—of buying an extra horse or a pair of horses, I think it is admitted by everybody that they have responded in a very fine way. After his labour in the ploughing, tilling, preparation and cultivation generally of his land, a man is entitled to get the best seed that this country can give him, not only in his own interests but in the interests of the nation.

From what personal knowledge I have, and from what knowledge I have collected from other people who have far wider and longer experience than I have in dealing with this matter, I am not at all satisfied that the seed situation is anything like as good as it should be. The only people who can decide, with any degree of accuracy at all, the total quantity of seed and the quantities of the various varieties which should be retained are those who deal directly with the matter. I want to say further that if dealers in the country, in the interests of the country and in order to have at hand an ample supply of first quality seed, lay in sufficient stocks, they ought not to be at a financial loss for doing so. They ought rather to be encouraged to do so. I do not want to labour that point too much, but it is important. I am satisfied of this, that there is a good deal of wheat gone into the soil in the last three weeks which is not good seed. I am satisfied further that there will be no other seed now available except the seed about which they know nothing, and that a number of farmers who are obliged under the quota Order to sow wheat will fail to do so, or will fail to sow their full quota. Some of them—unfortunately, those types exist among farmers as well as amongst any other section of the community—will be glad of the excuse. Of course, it is not an excuse that will be accepted either by the Minister or by the court, but they will make the excuse that they did not sow their full quota of wheat because the seed was not available.

I must confess that I find it hard to understand why the Minister did not think it necessary or desirable to make any references to those matters. The seed position, in my opinion, is of first importance. The other big question that we will be up against is the question of machinery. There is, throughout this country, a great scarcity of machinery. There is, in certain parts of the country where there was not mixed farming before and where there was no tillage tradition, a complete absence of machinery. The Minister made very little reference to that.

Deputy Halliden spoke about the loss to the nation through cattle diseases. I might say that the loss to this country of the amount of valuable grain which is wasted by being run out through the straw and chaff in some of the so-called threshing machines we have here is almost as great. I know that very little can be done about that at present, but I think the Minister might keep the matter in mind. If he gets the machinery which he is expecting, he ought to be very careful in the allocation of it. He ought to see that, particularly in the case of tractors and reapers and binders, they will be given to men who will not use them in a selfish way, but to men, who, when they have completed their own work, will be prepared to give the benefit of the use of those machines to their neighbours. The Minister said that the farmers' great fear was for the future, for the years immediately following upon the cessation of the war. He agreed that the farmer had a right to be fearful, but he did not tell us what the Government were doing or were prepared to do to allay those fears. He did not tell us whether he was considering any plans for giving the farmers, say, an indication that, in the next five years, they could proceed on the basis that there would be no revolutionary change.

He has not given any indication as to what will be done during the years when our farmers will be reverting to what one may call the normal methods of farming. Neither has he given any indication to the House or to the country whether farmers will revert to that normal type of farming. I am not referring now to agricultural economy. But the Minister did not indicate to the House or to the agricultural community whether the Government had considered the cost and the length of time it would take to revert to normal farming conditions, to the usual rotation of crops, the restoration of the fertility of the soil and so on. The Minister's speech dealt with a whole series of subheads with a short breezy explanation of each one. He mentioned why one subhead was increased by so much, why the expenditure under another was down by so much, what the net saving was and so on. I suggest that that sort of speech was not good enough at the end of 12 months' administration, and, particularly in this period, from the head of the most important Department of State. He certainly should have been able to give the House something more than a mere recital of subheads with a few words of explanation as to why the expenditure under one was up and under another was down.

I would like to know whether the Minister's Department has a policy on agriculture or on any of the main branches of agriculture: whether it has an immediate policy or a policy for the future. It is not sufficient for the Minister to get up and say that the Government have a policy because they make an Emergency Powers Order declaring that the area of arable land to be tilled is to be increased from 33? per cent. to 37½ per cent. or by some other percentage. What the Department of Agriculture is doing at the moment is that it is living from day to day and from year to year; that it is shaping its course not by any considered policy, but purely to meet a situation that may arise out of war conditions from one month to another or from one year to another.

The Minister made a passing reference to the fact that our problem in 1939 was that we had too much butter in the country, so much, he said, that we did not know what to do with it. Now we find ourselves at the other extreme, but the Minister did not give us very much information as to what was the cause of that. He gave certain figures about butter production. I think that I heard him admit for the first time that there was a reduction in our butter production. I seem to recollect that, on the last occasion on which I heard him speak of a butter shortage in the country, it was to this effect: not that there was any reduction in production—far from it, there had been an increase—but that if there was a shortage it was due to the fact that there had been such an enormous increase in the consumption of butter.

The Minister has a very large number of inspectors enforcing the compulsory tillage Order. From my experience of them they are doing their work in an efficient and conscientious way. Their task is not a pleasant one. At times they are not well received by a farmer when they have to go and tell him that he must put in another couple of acres over and above what he has already sown, or that he cannot put his bit of wheat in just the worst piece of land on the farm. I can only speak for the part of the country that I come from myself. The land there has been intensively cultivated, even in normal times. The farmers there are doing their work well and know how to do it. Does the Minister consider that it is in the interests of the nation that farmers should be compelled to sow wheat in ground that is completely unsuited for the purpose? Wheat has been sown this year on land in parts of my constituency and I can say that it might as well have been thrown around in Kildare Street. The return from it will be much the same as if it were thrown on that street. That kind of thing is not only a waste of energy on the part of farmers and their men, but it is a waste of good seed. I suppose that in the absence of the complete survey which my colleague, Deputy Hughes, has been urging on the Department to make, it is not easy either for the Department or its inspectors to get over that. I do say, however, that the sooner it is got over the better.

I am sorry that the Minister was not present when I was speaking on my old pet subject of seed wheat. I hope, not for my own sake but for that of the country, that he will look into some of the points that I made, and that he is not going to be advised by the people who are known as the Seed Assemblers' Association. I have described that association as being composed largely of Dublin shopkeepers with very little practical knowledge of what is happening in the country either with regard to the main crop or the seed position.

We have heard various views expressed on the question of seed. To my mind, if we want to assemble seed and get the best results, we must go back to the old system of seed saving which was operated in the days of our fathers and grandfathers, and that was the system of assembling the seed in stack. To assemble the seed in stack, it is necessary to allow the corn to ripen properly, to give it three, four or five days or even a week in stock, then to hand-stack it, and later to draw it in and stack it in the haggard until you are ready to thresh it in the spring. If that system were resorted to, you would not have the percentage of bad germination that you find to-day amongst the varieties of seed wheat which are being exhibited for sale. In the old days, when the system that I speak of was in operation, it was almost unheard of for a crop of wheat to fail. These seed assemblers in a great many cases leave the wheat in their barns in the chaff, which is a very sound system and is the best system of saving the wheat. I saw wheat being saved like that in the chaff and I have seen the best varieties produced. I have often seen that wheat bushelling 69 lbs. It is the most effective way to save wheat and the best way to give the people proper seed wheat.

The only way to encourage the wheat assembler on the farm is to give him a decent price, a price which will help to cover any ravages that may be caused by rats and mice. If he gets £3 5s. a barrel for the seed wheat he will be in a position to have it ready for the farmers in the sowing season and I believe that method would be much better for the agricultural community. It will also mean better conditions in the way of wages for the labourer, because I have no doubt the farmers will pass it on. I think that would be a very good idea. As a matter of fact, I think the county committees could do a great deal in the promotion of schemes of that kind. You have agricultural instructors in every county and they could supervise crops of growing corn and the chief agricultural officer in every county could certify as to the quality of the seed exposed for sale. He could guarantee that it was grown under his supervision. One result would be that you could manage to eliminate such mixtures in our wheat as we have at the present moment. That would be one result of making the farmer the seed assembler. I suggest that you should give him a better price than 52/6.

There is a certain position existing at the moment which I might regard as a racket, and which is no credit to the Irish people. That racket exists to this extent, that the unfortunate farmers are asked to pay £4 a barrel for seed wheat. I have been told that some farmers were asked for £5 a barrel. It is just like the tactics of the people who were able to get a certain price for tea and sugar. Some people were able to put quantities of seed wheat aside in the hope that there would be a scarcity. They are now in the happy position that they can get £4 or £5 a barrel. That racket should be stopped and the people engaged in it should be prosecuted and fined, because that type of thing will not help production. The people who are charged such a high price are very often unfortunate farmers who cannot pay cash for the seed. They have to go on the books and, added to that, they will probably have to pay 5 per cent. or 10 per cent. over the time the money is out. These are matters that should seriously be considered. A great deal depends on the spirit of our people, but I am sorry to say that we are not a very public-spirited people in this country.

With regard to the dairying industry, we have had different views expressed. I have always advocated an increase in the price of milk as supplied to the creameries. The price at present prevailing is not sufficient to enable the dairy farmer to maintain his dairy. We must consider the increased cost of everything. Production costs have increased considerably since 1940. How can the farmer who supplies milk to the creamery be expected to maintain his dairy if he does not get a price which covers production cost and leaves a small margin of profit? Consider what milk costs in cur cities and provincial towns. In the cities it is 2/4 a gallon. Surely it does not cost the producers for the cities and towns twice as much to produce the milk as it costs the farmers in the rural areas? I submit that, unless there is some improvement brought about for the country producer, and unless he gets some encouragement, we have very poor hopes of being the stockyard for Europe when the war is over.

Some definite encouragement will have to be given to the dairy farmers. Otherwise, instead of getting 6 ozs. of butter each, the people may not have 4 ozs. to get next year. I know that the price of 2/4 a lb. for butter is a terrible hardship on the poor people, and on those who have to live on fixed wages. The butter matters a lot to the very poor. Other people can afford rashers or sausages, but the poor have to depend entirely on the butter. I suggest that if it is at all possible the price of butter should be subsidised. I realise that that would cost a good deal and people might say where is the money to come from, but to tide us over the emergency and to give a sufficiency of food to our people at a price they will be able to afford, I think there is no other way of doing it at the moment except by way of subsidy. I am against subsidies of any kind if they can be avoided, but I think in this instance a subsidy would be the best solution of the problem.

With regard to the price of milk, I suggest to the Minister that it ought to be fixed at 1/- a gallon, based on a 3.30 or 3.40 butter fat test, which will take approximately 2.40 gallons of milk to produce. Why I suggest that is that, taking the average test in all creameries for May, June and July, the average test in any creamery is scarcely more than 3.30 or 3.40 at the most, and that is in the peak production months. The test may increase just before a cow goes dry. That would be the test at which you could strike an average price—3.30 or 3.40. In connection with the appeal which I make to the Minister for this increased price, I would like to mention that farmers have to pay 9/2 for the boxes which box 1 cwt. of butter—the boxes in which your butter is packed away. Then slack and slig costs £5 a ton, whereas in former years the cost was 30/-. Fuel oil is costing 1/6 a gallon, and it is scarce, and stationery and printing are three times the pre-war prices. Lubricating oil is almost impossible to get and it also is three times its pre-war price, so there is every reason why the producers should receive sympathetic consideration. They richly deserve an increase, when you take into consideration their production and maintenance costs. The cost of milk pails has increased and the cost of shoeing ponies and horses has gone up at least to three times the pre-war level. Apart from all that you must take into consideration the losses suffered by the farmers in maintaining their dairies—the losses through abortions, mastitis and deaths.

I appeal to the Minister to take all these things into consideration when he is deciding on the price. It is only reasonable that these matters should be taken into consideration when the price is being fixed. These things definitely affect the farmer because there is no year in which he will not have to sell a couple of old cows and replace them with young cows, and the fact is that it costs him considerably more to replace than to sell out. I appeal to the Minister to consider the position with a view to seeing whether he can pay the farmer a decent price. We are not asking for an exorbitant price when we ask for 1/-, and if the Minister could see his way to give us the 1/-, the present decline in dairying would be arrested and we would at least be able to maintain our position. If we allow dairying in this country to die, the ultimate result will be that, with the scarcity of fertilisers and so forth, we will be unable to manure our lands, which are now giving the best yields we can get from them in the way of cereals.

I appeal to the Minister to give this matter of the price of milk his consideration; otherwise, there will be only one result that I can see: the dairying industry will die a natural death. Labour is scarce and there is nobody to milk the cows but the farmer and his wife and children, and, to my own knowledge, children of ten and 12 years of age are milking cows before going to school. Surely they are entitled to payment. These juveniles are giving of their very best, and surely they are entitled to as good payment as adults. I would prefer to see a price of 1/- given to the farmers than to see the farmers forced to take action, and I am very much in dread that if that price is not given, action of some kind will be taken. There is co-operation between the Government and the farmers at present which helps in every direction, and I hope the Government will see their way to give us this price, which we say is not unreasonable.

Some years ago I made a statement in this House in connection with the position which a Minister for Agriculture holds, Now, in the changed conditions produced by the war and in conditions which have not altogether been produced by the war, because the policy of the Government had a good deal to do with them, the people of this country are maintaining themselves on what we produce here. If the condition of the soil which produces these commodities is not healthy and sound, the food cannot be healthy and sound, and, as a result, the people cannot be healthy. Consequently, a Minister for Agriculture in this country at present has a very grave and serious responsibility.

When we took over Government here some time in 1932, the first thing that the present Minister did was to tackle the dairying industry. I think most of us remember that period—Deputy Bennett, I am quite sure, remembers it. What was the position then? Why did we make that determined effort to put the dairying industry on some sort of solid foundation? Deputy Morrissey has spoken about the keystone of our industry. The reason was that that keystone was not then falling down; it had already fallen down, and it is due to the present Minister that the industry was put on some sort of foundation. I am not saying that that foundation was perfectly sound or that we got all the good results we expected. Difficulties arose and, of course, there are a greater number of difficulties in that industry to-day. The last Deputy who spoke mentioned some of them and, to be quite straight about it, the difficulty seems to be the difficulty which exists in most agricultural industries.

It seems to be the difficulty in Great Britain as well as in this country. From statements I have read in the newspapers, I know that Great Britain has a labour shortage of something like 20 per cent., with an increased agricultural production of 10 per cent. It cannot be doubted that their position is rather serious, and I should imagine that our position, from the point of view of labour and help, is much more serious. If we couple the position with regard to labour with the position with regard to power, the situation is still more serious. In a county like Meath and other counties, which were not in tillage before the war and which have been only partly getting into it, public representatives of the Opposition Parties did their best to indicate that there would never be any necessity for any such change. The statement generally made was: "This is only a political move; do not worry about it." If a man was anxious to retain a machine or to supply himself with a machine at that time, the usual statement made by people interested from the political point of view was: "Do not attempt to do any such thing, because this is only a political move."

Every one of us now realises that it was not a political move, that it was a necessity, and, furthermore we realise now that the position we are now in is surely going to continue for many years after the war. Consequently, we should try now to settle down to an examination of the position and do the best we can with a possible shortage of more than 20 per cent. in labour and a very high percentage of shortage in machinery and other power. I agree with Deputy Hughes that when such a position arises, the only thing we can do is to avail ourselves of any sort of organisation we can devise.

There has been talk here about the seed position, which is by no means satisfactory. I must say that whatever seed I got from millers and other people is satisfactory, but seed which I saw in other places is not satisfactory. The County Meath Committee of Agriculture foresaw that position at a very early stage and devised a scheme by which farmers would get an advance from the county committee for any type of good spring seed wheat they had. The money was advanced to these farmers, after the seed was inspected in its growing state and after it had been threshed. When the wheat was put into stack, if the stacking had been satisfactorily done, the money was advanced. There was some interest to be paid on the money because the committee could not borrow without an interest charge.

That scheme, however, was not a success. Farmers did not seem to take to it. The idea was to provide for the situation which has now arisen, but although we went to the trouble of getting the money and having it ready, it was not availed of. That was largely due to the fact that there was a degree of want of permanency about the situation; in other words, the idea was that if the war stopped to-morrow, there would be no more of it. Now I think that is the general view to-day in regard to supplies, that we will have to have a lot of seed—possibly not for the next ten or 20 years but at any rate for a great number of years, and that we will be compelled here to try to produce our own needs. Therefore, we will want to have good healthy seed and proper production so that we may produce to supply the nation. I think that a good deal of research should be instituted now because that is what is called the long-term policy. A great deal should be done now and an effort should be made to satisfy ourselves as to what lines we are going to work on and what will be our long-term policy.

We ought to satisfy ourselves first of all as to the type of manure we can produce here, to try to supplement or replace the artificial manures which are not present and which may not be present. We might also satisfy ourselves on the point of the utility of artificial manure at all, because there are authorities and good thinkers in Europe, Great Britain and other countries who are somewhat averse to the use of artificial manure, and who say with a high degree of proof that the great amount of disease which has sprung up in live stock in recent years and which has also occurred in human beings can be traced directly to the unhealthy state of the soil produced by artificial manure. That is a question that should be examined. Deputy Hughes quoted the case of Great Britain, and told us what they were doing, but I may tell him what they are also doing in regard to this matter of manures. They are considering the use of compost and other manurial properties to replace artificial manures. They are satisfied that the use of that particular manure not alone makes the soil more productive, but that its produce is more healthy and suitable for consumption. If we take that point of view, then it would leave us entirely free and independent of the artificial manures that we have not here in this country. I think it would be a very useful thing if in some of his farms—and I understand that he has got a few presented to him lately—the Minister would try some small plots to see what the results of these experiments would be. I am convinced that they are extremely useful. For the last four or five years I have been testing that sort of thing in a very small way myself, and I found that it gave extremely satisfactory results. In fact, the results achieved, considering that the material was not manufactured or conditioned as well as it should be, would make me believe that there is a good deal in that point, and that there is much more in it than in some of the scientific investigations Deputy Hughes spoke of.

Now with reference to the other side of our problem, that is our present position as regards production, I think that we should naturally try to get over the difficulties that we have to face up to. I am not going to deny that we have these difficulties, that they are there. I think it is much better to admit that they are there and see how we can cope with them and have the organisation that is essential to deal with them. I have always believed, and Deputy Hughes evidently believes the same thing, that the local committees such as committees of agriculture could play a very big part in that question of organisation. We did try to play an active part in County Meath in the question of the selection of seed. We got every assistance from the Department of Agriculture but—and we must be honest about this—we could not get it from the farmers themselves.

The cow-testing position is much the same. For many years—for three or four years I think—in the county committee of agriculture we earmarked something like £30 as assistance free, gratis and for nothing, to try to get a cow-testing association started in County Meath. We had a good number of dairies in the county sending out their milk and supplying it to the City of Dublin but that money was not once demanded. The fact that there was no effort made to utilise that money led me to believe that there must be some ill effects produced by cow testing; in other words, that it was not a completely good thing and of advantage to those producing milk; consequently they did not use it. That is a question I would like the Minister to deal with. I would like him to tell us not so much about the advantages of cow-testing but to try to give us some of the disadvantages of cow-testing if he knows there are any. I do not think we have ever heard a great deal of the disadvantages of the cow-testing scheme except in a semi-official way. It would be desirable, therefore, that we should some time, either in this debate or in some other statement, be told the disadvantages of trying to do these things.

It is certain however that we are now compelled here to supply all that we can and to produce our own requirements. We can only do that by having the best and the soundest seed and I do not think even that is sufficient. After that we must put the seed in the right land and after we have done that we must try to organise the means of saving the crop when it matures. As far as I know of County Meath there was occasionally a mistake made and maybe the seed went into the wrong land. There were failures then but the real failures came when we were not able to harvest the crop. It is a terrible thing for a farmer to see his crop falling at the head, absolutely helpless there, with no machinery and assistance; that has happened in many cases. It has happened largely with oats but also with wheat. Oats, however, was worse because the wheat did not go down so badly. The oats went down and the result was that the best part of the crop remained in the field. That was a terrible calamity, a terrible thing to have some of that crop lost, but there was a considerable amount lost last year and no one will deny it. We must see how we can avoid that this year. In Great Britain they talk about certain clubs or camps and of bringing young fellows from the city. We have a lot of young fellows in this country. I can see them strolling around the roads. I saw that happening and I saw them passing along the road when I was working myself for other people. The sooner an organisation is set up to have that kind of thing stopped and suppressed, the better. There is no use in talking about one man one job at the present time. If that was the position we would starve, the whole concern would fail and there would be complete collapse. I hope the idea of one man one job will be stopped for the duration of this war and for some time afterwards, otherwise we will starve.

It is all right to stand up, square your shoulders and say the Minister is to blame, but I think it has proved that there are different sections of the community to blame, and the sooner we realise that the better. These sections must realise it themselves. When they get a certain amount of encouragement then they will have to do their best to help themselves. There is no use in asking the Government and the Ministers to do everything, but I am afraid that is a type of mind we have developing in this country. Everything is asked from the Minister. An increase in price is asked and there is no effort made to condition things or to put up resistance to a demand for this or that. We have the situation, explained here by the last speaker, as far as milk prices are concerned. A lot of the prices for raw materials went up because we did not resist them. Instead of doing that we turned round and blamed the Government. We are told: "Look at the high price of butter: that is the Government's fault." Then, when people talked about the high prices, we were told to look at the high price of cows. But when these people themselves went into the shops they paid the high price for the butter. Consequently, we paid the price. We did not make any effort to resist that. It would be a help to the Government if these high prices were resisted. A Government is in need of a great deal of help from the community. If we do not make an effort to help in these ways, the Government cannot function satisfactorily and our position will be a most unsatisfactory one. I am not saying that for any political reason, but in connection with the position in which we find ourselves. A short time ago we got a great shock. The people resisted that shock because they stood together and were determined to defend themselves. The same situation exists in connection with our ordinary business. If we do not try to defend ourselves against the high prices charged, these prices will continue to go up. Therefore, we should do our utmost to try to assist the Government and the Minister. When we get assistance to do certain things or to try out anything new we should carry out those things as best we can. We can assist the Government in trying to keep down prices.

I agree that the dairying industry is a fundamental one. The people in Meath and Westmeath and other counties who feed cattle can say a good deal in connection with the question of dairying and the breeds of dairy cattle. I am sure there are Deputies here who attend fairs and know what goes on. In Meath we hear a good deal about calves and the dairying industry in the south. These remarks are not always very complimentary. There is great objection to the type of calf and how it is bred. I think if that could be rectified, if more attention were paid to the bulls used in the south and better calves bred, the people in the feeding counties would be more inclined to buy them. I do not really know whose fault it is. From my knowledge of dairy-bred cattle, I do not think that they can be really as bad as that. A calf is a by-product and there should be some effort made to produce better calves. The question of how these calves are handled is also very important. How they are bred is also important, but the most important matter is how they are carried around. There is an enormous loss in connection with the calves that come to Meath and Westmeath, and even Cavan. When they are taken home, some of them may die. They are sold at a very cheap rate. That is one of the greatest misfortunes. It attracts people to buy them and very often results in misfortune. If they grow up, they are a great impediment because they remain on for two or three years. Where they did happen to live and grow up in Meath, I have seen them finding their way to Cavan and coming back afterwards to Meath as having been fed in Cavan. I think that is one of the things that is damaging the creameries. The calves should be produced from more suitable cows. After all, you will have bull calves and you will have to get rid of them. If they are of a type that will fatten—and I think the dairying strain does not damage the type—they will get a far better price.

I am sure Deputy Giles and Deputy Fagan and other Deputies on this side of the House can tell you a lot about the number of these calves that come up from the south, their condition, the way in which they are handled, and the mortality that arises in connection with them. That, of course, is a question entirely for the dairy farmers. I do not think they should ask the Minister to enter too much into that. I know that Deputy Hughes had a quick and convenient method of getting these calves produced, but I do not think that that will get over the difficulty.

He could not expect the Minister to see to all that. It is a question entirely for the dairy farmers to see that the proper bulls are there and that the cows are reasonably good. So far as the creameries are concerned, I think that is one of the things that does them infinite damage. It is a matter for the farmers to put that right in order to improve their industry.

So far as an increase in price is concerned, it is my experience, and I think everybody else's, that we could pay them 3/- per gallon for milk, according to the butter content, and in one month they would not be satisfied. I think that is not the question to be examined at all. I think it is not a question of money. It is a question of what these dairy farmers and creameries are getting back for their milk and butter. It may be that they are not getting enough. For instance, I can say that I have to pay, roughly, 32 stones of wheat for 20 stones of flour. I do not know whether that is equitable or not, but it is a good deal of wheat for the flour. It does not matter how much I get for my wheat, because other things keep going up in proportion. The whole question is: how much can I buy for my money? The farmer is not any different from the ordinary worker. The worker weighs up his wages by what he can purchase with them, how much he can get for them. The farmer is in the same position. When he sells his produce, he wants to know how much service and everything else he can get. That is another question that has to be examined. I will not ask the Government to examine that either. They may have some body examining that at present. It is an extremely important detail, especially now when we have no means of balancing it, because we cannot go outside to bring anything in. Consequently, this question should be decided; not so much the question of the exact money paid, but as to how much we will get back. If that were done, I think it would settle a lot of these questions.

In Meath and Westmeath, and I suppose in some portions of County Kildare, we have not provided ourselves with machinery for harvesting, nor have we provided ourselves with horses. I notice from some returns we get a great disparity in that regard between Meath and, say, Wexford. Wexford has 18,000 working horses and there are some 90,000 acres less in Wexford than in Meath. In Meath we have only 10,000 working horses, and out of these we would hardly have 5,000 able to pull a plough; so that the burden we have to bear in Meath is far greater than say, in Wexford or Kilkenny.

Why not get a tractor?

If you tell me where to get it.

From the Minister.

That is the weakness of the whole thing. We expect the Minister and the Department to do everything for us. Certainly, I was foolish enough to ask the Minister, but I knew well that he could not give it to me. Still I asked him, because that is the general method. The fact of the matter is that the tractors are not there. Neither are the horses there to be bought. Consequently, if there is any machinery coming in, I think I am justified in asking that Meath and Westmeath should get preferential treatment, because we have need for machinery there. That is only fair and right. We are the highest wheat-producing county in Leinster. I suppose almost 100 years ago we were the largest wheat-producing county in Ireland. We were then the greatest tillage county in the country, but somebody touched the button and we became one of the greatest cattle-producing counties. Those things go in cycles. I am sure it will have the approval of everybody if we get a little extra machinery in the County Meath when it becomes available.

On the Vote on Account I made reference to certain aspects of our problem of national food production. I do not want to travel over that ground again this evening——

No, that is barred.

It would not be wholly barred, Sir.

You are not allowed to discuss it.

I want to submit that if I do by accident and under provocation invade the domain of national food production, I can legitimately do so. I do not intend to do it; I want to give you that assurance at the outset. I want to refer to an aspect of our agricultural policy and agricultural activities to which I made no reference on the occasion of debate on the Vote on Account, and that is the position of the largest section of our working-class community, the agricultural worker. The Minister for Agriculture said last night that the farmer is better off now than pre-war, and better off than he was since 1920. That may be true; it probably is true in respect of certain large farmers with substantial holdings of good land, well-to-do from a credit point of view, and possibly with other interests as well. But it certainly is not true of the small farmer who represents the generality of our food producers in the country.

So far as he is concerned, prices may be better for him, but if they are better for him, the raw material of living is much more expensive for him to-day than it has been at any time during the past 50 years, because the prices to-day are higher, even according to the statistics of the Department of Industry and Commerce, than they have ever been in the past 50 years. Even during the last war, the highest point reached by the index figure was 176, the base in July, 1914, being 100. Now we have an index figure of 296, the July 1914 base being 100, so that prices to-day are admitted by the Department of Industry and Commerce itself to be much higher than they ever were during the last war and very much higher than they have ever been during the last 50 years. Therefore, if the small farmer has got a better price for his produce to-day we have to bear in mind that the things which he must purchase, clothes, footwear, food and all the other necessaries of life have all gone up to a greater extent than his agricultural prices have gone up, and to an extent which, on his limited income, makes it impossible for him to enjoy a tolerably decent standard of life. But if the Minister can point to the fact that the farmers are better off than they were before the war and better off than at any time since 1920, he certainly cannot say that the agricultural worker is better off, because assuredly he is very much worse off to-day than he has been at any time for the past 20 or 25 years. In consequence of the steep and rapid rise in the cost of living, the £ now has a purchasing value of 9/-. If you assume, and it is a generous assumption, that the pre-war wages of the agricultural worker were 26/-, the present purchasing power of that 26/- is 12/-.

I think the Deputy gave us that on the Vote on Account.

If you look at what I said on the Vote on Account you will find that I did not make any reference to the agricultural worker at all.

You gave us that value of the £.

It has not changed since, Sir.

No, but we are not supposed to have any repetition of the discussion.

Am I to be prohibited from using the word "pound" this evening, or should I call it "20 shillings"? I want to put it before the Minister for Agriculture, who is responsible for agricultural production and who is responsible for supervising in an administerial capacity the agricultural conditions operating in this country, that so far as a large section of our food producers are concerned, the agricultural workers, they are in the position to-day that their pound will buy only 9/- worth of food, and their 26/- wage will buy to-day only 12/- worth of food. I suggest to the Minister that that is a position about which he or any Deputy in this House cannot feel satisfied. One has only got to mix with agricultural workers to know their living conditions, and to recognise their wretched standard of living. I say without hesitation that the agricultural worker to-day is more poorly clad than he has been at any time for the past 20 years. I say that his standard of living to-day is lower than it has been at any time for the last 20 years. I say that his children to-day have less clothes, food and footwear than at any time during the past 20 years. So far as the agricultural workers as a class are concerned, they not merely play a very important part in our normal peace-time agricultural economy but they play a still more vital part in the agricultural economy in the crisis through which we are passing. The agricultural worker to-day is in the first line of trenches so far as our food-line defence is concerned. He is the mainstay of our agricultural production. I want to put it to the Minister that it is not possible for him or for the Government or for any Deputy in this House to justify the payment to agricultural workers of a wage which is not capable of providing them with a decent standard of living. We declare in our Constitution that part of the directive policy of the State is to ensure that persons shall be enabled to provide for their domestic requirements through their avocations. No one will deny that the agricultural worker works hard. Nobody will deny that he works under conditions which are anything but ideal.

No one will attempt to contend that he follows a congenial occupation. It is not through want of energy on the part of the agricultural worker; it is not through want of ability on his part of the agricultural worker; it is not through want of ability on his part; it is not through want of a desire to work and provide for his family that he is in receipt of a wage which is incapable of providing him with a decent standard of living. The responsibility lies with the State, which has not taken and is not taking effective steps to lift the agricultural worker out of the morass of economic bondage in which he has been compelled to reside for long years in consequence of the payment to him of an indefensibly low standard of wages. I would never attempt to defend the kind of economic situation under which industrial workers are paid a certain rate of wages substantially higher than those paid to agricultural workers. The agricultural worker is not merely an agricultural labourer; he is a skilled man doing a skilled job —as skilled a job as any man in any factory is doing. To describe him as an agricultural labourer is merely a subterfuge to enable him to be paid a lower rate of wages. So far as the agricultural worker is concerned, he may not be able to do the job which the man in the factory can do, but in their own spheres both are skilled workers, and there never was and never could be and never will be any justification for paying a lower rate of wages to the agricultural worker than is paid to the industrial worker. I think we have got progressively to shake ourselves away from the mentality which enables us to take refuge in the belief that the agricultural worker is an unskilled worker, to be paid a low rate of wages, to be condemned to a low standard of living and to tolerate the permanent evil of having his wife and children living in a state little removed from poverty. The best way, of course, in which the standard of living of the agricultural worker could be raised is by the State taking legislative action to ensure that a code would be evolved which would ensure a decent standard of living for him, and which would enable him to maintain his wife and children in a decent standard of comfort. Nobody can attempt to justify the payment of less than a decent family wage to the agricultural worker or to any other class of worker.

The Minister is the person responsible for agricultural policy, and I want to urge on him that he ought to have a deep and an abiding interest in the agricultural workers. The Minister for Industry and Commerce regarded it as his duty to take legislative steps to protect the interests of industrial workers. In the same way, the Minister for Agriculture should regard it as his duty under the Constitution, and in accordance with the moral law, to take responsibility for ensuring that agricultural workers are rescued from the poverty which they have known too long.

The farmer must be made pay a decent rate of wages to his agricultural worker, and in order to do that he must be given a price for all his main crops which will enable him to do so. The State should aim now and in the future at evolving an agricultural policy under which it will say to the farmer: "We will give you a fair price for your agricultural produce based on the cost of production, and on a legislative liability on your part to provide your agricultural worker with a decent standard of living." During the past 20 years the Dáil has passed various measures calculated to provide legislative guarantees to various classes of workers, but not one of them, except the Act—and that only to an extent—which set up the Agricultural Wages Board, made any serious attempt to lift the standard of living of the agricultural worker. The House has passed fairly comprehensive enactments in respect of industrial workers in the Conditions of Employment Act of 1933, in the Holidays Act and in various other measures, but, so far as the agricultural worker is concerned, he has been the outcast, the legislative untouchable, and no effective steps have been taken to provide him with a decent code of social legislation which would protect his conditions of employment and secure to him the rights which have been rightly extended to workers in other spheres.

The greatest anomaly of all, I think, is that while under our legislation we provide a weekly half-holiday for practically all classes of workers in the State, for some curious reason we say that the agricultural worker does not need it. Why? Is his work too light or are his conditions too ideal to necessitate him getting a half-holiday in the week? Not only do we stop short there, but we say to him that while we compel every other employer in the country to provide an annual holiday with pay—for industrial workers, shop workers, domestic workers and workers of various other categories— we say to the agricultural worker: "You are not going to get any holidays so far as the State can ensure it." I would like to hear somebody attempt to justify that cold indifferent outlook so far as agricultural workers are concerned. I can hardly imagine that the Minister, with his pronounced agricultural bias, could be unsympathetic in a matter of this kind. Of course, as we know, both in the personal and in the economic sense, old, bad habits are not easy to break, but I want to put it to the Minister that under the Constitution he has a responsibility for the conditions under which agriculture is carried on. As Minister he surely cannot be satisfied with the low standard of wages paid to agricultural workers or with the conditions under which they are compelled to live. They have no weekly half-holiday and no annual holiday. They suffer from a complete want of that security which is rightly extended to industrial workers. In debate, the Minister may endeavour to take refuge behind that body known as the Agricultural Wages Board, but I want to put it to him that by doing so he cannot escape his responsibilities so far as the agricultural workers are concerned. The setting up of the Agricultural Wages Board has made no perceptible contribution to an improvement in the conditions of the agricultural worker. If the board were not there, the agitation by agricultural workers would probably have forced up wages even to a higher level than that which operates to-day. Independent of the Agricultural Wages Board, the Minister has a very heavy responsibility towards our agricultural economy. I hope that my appeal to him will not fall on deaf ears. I ask him to give the House an assurance that a code of legislation will be evolved which will put the agricultural worker on a decent plane from the point of view of a weekly wage.

The Deputy is demanding legislation?

A code of law surely implies legislation.

I am not talking in the actual Bill sense, but I am trying to inculcate in the Minister a belief in the philosophy that he ought to endeavour to evolve either a code of legislation or a code of agricultural practice such as will give the agricultural worker a decent wage, annual holidays and a weekly half-holiday. If the Minister does that, he will earn the gratitude of the whole community of agricultural workers, and, I think, of everybody in the country who is sincerely anxious to raise the standard of living of the downtrodden agricultural classes.

Listening to quite a number of the pessimistic statements that were made in the House to-day, I have been wondering why all the pessimism. A few moments ago I looked up the statistics governing the production of cereals and potatoes in this country since 1931. In that year we grew only 20,000 acres of wheat: last year the figure was 574,000 acres, or almost 30 times the quantity that was grown in 1931. In 1931 we had 622,000 acres under oats. The figure for 1942 was 877,000 acres. In 1931 we had 346,000 acres under potatoes, and in 1942 we had 425,000 acres. We had a corresponding leap in the acreage under barley. In 1931 the figure was 115,000 acres, and in 1942 we grew 186,000 acres. In 1939 the area under wheat was 235,000 acres, and in 1942, after a period of four years, the production of wheat was doubled.

I think the farming community should be congratulated for that increased production, and likewise the Department of Agriculture and the Minister. As long as I have been a member of the Dáil, the Minister has been constantly putting forward the plea that we should have increased tillage. If he had not persisted with that policy, and if we had remained in the position in which we were in 1931, when there were only 20,000 acres under wheat, the country would certainly be in a nice mess to-day. I hold that the Minister for Agriculture above any person in this House should be congratulated for being so persistent in impressing on the House the absolute necessity of growing as far as possible our own requirements in the line of wheat, oats and potatoes. I remember the Opposition time after time pointing out that we could not grow wheat, and I remember the persistence with which Deputy Ryan used to prove to them that we did grow it once and we could do it again.

There is one point that many Deputies seemed to overlook and that is that since 1939 up to the present day the increased tillage was carried out in spite of the absence of large quantities of artificial manures. I do not wish to say very much more with reference to these matters, beyond mentioning that if the Government had not continued the policy which they have advocated for the last ten or 11 years, when the war broke out we would have been on the brink of starvation. Practically all our supplies were cut off and if the Government's policy had not been in operation it would have meant starvation for the whole country.

There is one point I should like to mention with regard to seed wheat. There is something radically wrong with the distribution of seed wheat throughout the country and I should like to mention to the Minister that whereas immediately after the harvest we have plenty of grain that would be suitable for seed, when it comes to spring somehow or other that grain seems to disappear. Possibly the best of it has been ground into flour. I suggest that when the wheat has been delivered to the mills an inspector should be allowed to earmark certain quantities that would be suitable for seed purposes and that quantity could be handed over to the seed merchants for distribution.

Two or three weeks ago I drew the Minister's attention to the excellent schemes in connection with farm improvements. There are, however, one or two anomalies, particularly in the application of the scheme to congested districts. I know quite a number of farmers in my own district who are anxious to open main drains, but they get no grant for opening main drains, whereas right across the river in another county grants are given for that purpose. I thought it was due to a misinterpretation of the Act by the inspector, but on probing the matter further I discovered to my surprise that he was quite correct in his interpretation, that is, that in congested districts grants are given for surface drainage provided the tillage is carried out the same year, but no grants are given for the main drainage in the farms in the congested districts. I suggest to the Minister that the latitude that he has given to good tillage areas should also be given to the congested districts in regard to the opening of main drainage.

I quite agree with Deputy Hughes about the importance of soil analysis. I do not think there is an immediate necessity for it, but in view of post-war production we should make a start and pay at least some attention to it now, because if a farmer is in a position to know the constituents of the soil in his farm and the minerals it possesses or lacks, and whether it is acid or otherwise, he would be able to decide what crop to grow in a particular field.

At one stage in the life of this country oatmeal was one of the staple foods I am wondering if there is any possibility of arranging a scheme whereby sufficient oats could be put aside for manufacture into oatmeal. To-day in the Highlands of Scotland oatmeal is practically a staple food for the workman and, in view of the possibility that we may have a shortage of wheat—we do not know how the spring or the harvest will turn out—I suggest that attention should be paid after the harvest to putting aside sufficient oats to be manufactured into oatmeal. You want only 5 per cent. of the total oat crop to provide sufficient oatmeal for the people of the country, and that should not be very difficult.

I do not see any justification for the pessimistic notes sounded throughout the House. The Minister and the farmers should be complimented on the present position, particularly when one remembers the position of tillage—wheat, oats, barley and potatoes—in 1931 and what it is at the present time.

There is probably no debate that extends over such a period as the debate on the Vote relating to agriculture. I suppose that is only natural in a country which is purely an agricultural country. Probably no Minister has to listen to such a variety of subjects as the Minister for Agriculture. It is probably a fact that the discussion generally does not as much impress people not engaged in agriculture as do some other debates. There is nothing very romantic about the subject or about the people engaged in agriculture. There is probably not the same standard of debate as arises out of other Estimates. That is natural also. Not all of us engaged in the humdrum occupation of agriculture can rise to the heights of oratory common in most other classes of the community. We can only endeavour to put a case as well as we can.

References have been made to the present and the future condition of agriculture, and it has been argued, if not here, certainly outside, that on the whole the farmers are more prosperous than any other section of the community, and that a lot of the agitation, a lot of the talk on their behalf, is so much eyewash. I do not think that is so. Deputy Norton referred to the cost of living and said it was greater than at any period within the last 50 years. Possibly that is so—I think it is so. It affects the farmer and the farm worker just the same as any other section, and it is not fair that, when assessing the farmers income, reference should be made only to the price he gets for particular produce. A proper assessment of his real income can only be made by taking into account all the circumstances, including those mentioned by Deputy Norton and those emphasised by Deputy Mahony when he pointed out the increased cost of the farmer's essentials.

We have to remember that the farmer represents the main industry and that for centuries, in fact, he has been the provider for all the other classes. In other words, he has carried the rest of the community on his back. He has become rather tired of that occupation which, year by year, has become increasingly difficult for him. References have been made to the last war period and the comparison between conditions then and now. We have to remember that the farmer's position then was altogether different from what it is now. We were governed then by an alien country which imposed a yearly taxation on this part of the country of from £7,000,000 to £10,000,000. The farmer was working in circumstances then in which he had a bigger income. There was no restriction on his prices and he was maintaining, directly and indirectly, the rest of the community, while subject to taxation on the basis of a yearly taxation of £9,000,000 or £10,000,000, and we all know that to-day that amount has risen to £50,000,000. It cannot be argued that he is in better financial circumstances. However, one could go into that for a long time without convincing anybody of anything. I merely refer to it as an indication that the arguments as to the farmer's economic position being better now than at any other period are not borne out by the facts.

The post-war position has taken a very prominent place in this debate, as is to be expected, and we have had references to the conditions which will obtain in this country and, indeed, in the world generally when the war is over. It is impossible to predict what our economic position with regard to agriculture will be. There is, and has been, a tendency to refer to agriculturists generally as unprogressive and unintelligent people who are not capable of imbibing the scientific teachings of modern days and the theoretical preachings of others. I resent that. As I have said, the farmers have maintained the rest of the community here for centuries, and in regard to their intelligence and their capacity to meet sudden grave situations, I think history has proved that the Irish agriculturist is as capable of adapting himself to sudden changes as the agriculturists in any country, if he is not more capable of doing so. We have only to read the pages of history to realise that when grave changes of agricultural policy became imperative, by reason of the actions of another Government, the farmer in this country was able to change over to altogether new conditions, perhaps more readily than agriculturists in any other country could possibly have done, and it is a libel on the farmer of this country for anybody to say that he is unable to adapt himself to new methods and to changes in his conditions.

This debate has ranged over many subjects, but the general tenor of the debate has largely been concerned with dairying. I should like this question of dairying to be argued from the point of view of its effect on our general national prosperity rather than from the narrow point of view of its effect on the 90,000 unfortunate dairy farmers and their workers. The dairy farmer has an alternative. If a situation develops in which his condition is worsened, he can get out while the going is good. He is getting out, and small blame to him. If we are to debate this matter at all, we should debate it from the angle of its effect on our general national economy, and it is from that angle that I want the House to consider what effect a diminishing dairying return will have on our general economy.

In discussing that, we ought to consider the reason for the decline, if there is a decline, and I think it is generally admitted that there is. The Minister, for the first time in any debate I have heard, clearly admitted it when he spoke yesterday. If that decline is going to have a serious effect on our national economy, we have to discuss as well as we can the best policy to pursue in order to arrest that decline. During previous debates and often by interruptions, the Minister has resented any declaration to the effect that there was a reduction in dairy herds, or even that production had gone down. I have always been sceptical as to the statistics in relation to dairy cattle. Perhaps I am of a suspicious turn of mind, but I have not been able to believe the returns which showed that there was no decline in the numbers of dairy cattle, because, from what I could see with my own eyes, there was a very great decline in many directions amongst a great number of farmers. Be that as it may. Anyhow we have got to the position where the Minister has reluctantly been forced to admit that there is a decline in the production of creamery butter, no matter whether there has been a decline in the number of herds or not—that we produced 19 per cent. more creamery butter in 1939-40 than we did in 1943. I think it may be taken from the Minister's figures that the percentage is exactly 19—if I am reading the figures right. The figures say that in 1943 we produced 600,000 cwts. of butter, and in 1938-39 714,000. I think a rough calculation will show that is exactly 19 per cent of difference—19 per cent. in the production of butter in four years and at a period when the necessity for production was never greater.

That is a position that nobody in this House can view with any degree of equanimity. Apart altogether from any consideration of export markets for butter, it is surely a lamentable thing that in a purely agricultural country like this we are only able to produce enough butter to supply six ounces per head of our population. We have got to consider the reasons for this decline. They are many. First and fore most there is the point that any other form of agriculture whether it is tillage, the feeding of live stock or grazing, is more attractive at the moment to the farmer, put in terms of pounds, shillings and pence, than is dairying.

In fact, it would be more profitable for the ordinary dairy farmer to let his land on the 11-months system at the prices that are operating for land at the moment, sit down and enjoy himself, and live a grand life for a couple of years, than to engage in the arduous occupation of dairying. He would have more money out of it than he would out of dairying. Let us consider why that is so. The amount of capital expenditure in the dairying industry is proportionately greater than tillage, live stock, or any other form of agriculture. The dairy farmer is subjected to more disappointments and losses in various ways than is the farmer engaged in any other of the agricultural occupations. There are more losses by disease. I don't want to refer to that question specifically now—to mastitis and abortion—but they loom largely in the adverse sides of the dairy farmers' accounts. There are, in general, more losses in dairying than there are in the other occupations of the industry. Then the occupation of dairying is an arduous one. It necessitates longer hours both for the farmer himself and his workers than any other form of agriculture. It is a constant job for the farmer. He has to be there day and night, working longer hours than any other worker. His paid worker is in the same position. As Deputy Norton has pointed out, he has no half-holiday on Saturday, and he has to work on Sundays. Generally speaking, the farmer himself, except for the non-milking periods of the winter months, is unable to get a holiday. He must stick to his job. If he does not, the fence is going to fall down. The same applies to the unfortunate worker. He has to work longer hours every day than any other worker, and he has to work on Sunday. For that reason it is no wonder that it is not such an attractive form of work for the ordinary worker—not so attractive as would be work in the field or in some other way. The wonder to me is that, scarce as labour in the milking district is, that it is not much worse than it is. The main reason it is not worse, and that so many milkers are left, is that the offer of a constant job is some inducement to them, that they are probably more assured of constant work in dairying than in any other occupation. It is a 12 months' job, and once the milker is engaged he is assured of work for ten or 12 months, a thing he is not certain of in any other agricultural occupation. Were it not for that, I believe no one would want to milk cows at present.

These are the reasons and now we have to consider in what way we are going to remedy it. How are we going to arrest the decline in dairying? That is a problem, and I will admit it is a very grave problem, one that is not going to be solved by any debate in this House or by any Minister in a minute, a day or perhaps a year or years. But it has got to be attempted. Our future agricultural prosperity will probably depend on it. Nobody knows what form our agricultural policy will take in the post-war period or what form of agricultural economy will be forced upon us by circumstances outside our control. It may be that we will have to be engaged in other forms of agriculture than we have been accustomed to here. I am not unduly pessimistic and I resent the implication that the Irish agriculturist is not as capable of adapting himself to sudden changes as is the agriculturist in any other country. I say again that he is more capable, and that history has proved that. I am not pessimistic as to the future. Whatever dangers the future may bring the Irish farmer will face up to them and meet them. For the moment, however, when the dairying industry is as essential to the prosperity of this country, as we believe it to be, then it is probable that, whatever form our agricultural economy takes in the future, the production of butter and milk, other fats and livestock will be an essential part of that economy. It is vital that we realise that now and that we take care that a declining industry, such as this is, shall not decline further and get beyond the danger point. For that purpose, some of us have put our names to a resolution saying that we believe that it is essential that extraordinary remedies must be taken in an extraordinary situation, and that much as some of us dislike the question of a subsidy—and subsidies have entered very largely into agricultural finance in the last few years—they become necessary by circumstances. I argued some time ago that the farmer's income was affected by the grave increase of taxation from £10,000,000 and £20,000,000 to £50,000,000, and so one can argue in the other direction on the question of his production.

We argue, therefore, that it is essential to maintain the industry at the moment and for that purpose there must be great inducement given to the farmers, to prevent a further decline. The figures that have been given by any Deputies who have considered the question of this industry have all gone to prove that there is a decline whether or not there is a decline in the numbers of cattle. The latter is problematical though I believe there is a decline. Certainly there has been a decline in production. If the House considers it necessary to arrest that decline then we see at the moment no other remedy than a continuance of the price the farmer is now receiving for the coming season of eight or nine months. In the meantime the greatest possible investigation should be made into the whole question of the dairying industry.

As to how we are to increase the prosperity of people engaged in the dairying industry, I suppose the natural thing that will occur to anybody is that the best way is by an increase in production. That would be the best way to do it—to increase the production all round of the dairy cattle. But that is not so easily achieved as some theorists would lead us to believe. Deputy Halliden, and no man knows his subject better, spoke at great length of the system of cow testing and said that it was certain to lead to an increase in the dairy cattle of this country and in the production of milk. I have been as ardent a helper in the direction of getting people to engage in cow testing as any Deputy. I have engaged in it myself for a very great number of years and tried to induce as many others as I could to follow my example. Cow testing has not met with the success that the Minister or the Department or some of us who are interested in it had hoped it would. There are reasons for that.

I spoke in this House once on this matter, and in one newspaper it appeared that I spoke against cow testing. I did not. I suggested that cow testing, while it is helpful, was no solution whatever of the difficulties of the dairy farmer, and that in itself it could not help him to increase production. All cow testing can do or ever will do is to tell you in the clearest possible way which are your best cows and which are your worst, and it leaves you there. Cow testing as such can only do that—tell you your worst and your best cows. That is, of course, a good thing for the ordinary farmer to know, and if farmers could be induced to engage in cow testing in order to know that definitely, it would be helpful. But, unfortunately, only 4 or 5 per cent. of dairy farmers are taking it up. The main reason why they have not taken it up is that it is no help to the ordinary small farmer to be told which is his worst cow. He has an idea that certain cows are bad. In fact, he is rather afraid to be told that there are too many bad, because he feels then that his difficulty is insoluble.

Cow testing has been taken up for a long time by various people, but it is always the fairly well-to-do farmers who have taken it up, because when it was proved to them that certain cows were bad and others were worse they felt, owing to their financial circumstances, that they were able to get rid of the bad cows and get better ones. If a farmer was not able to do that, there was no reason for his engaging in cow testing. It is only for such people as I have mentioned that it is valuable. That is one of the reasons why cow testing has not been popular amongst dairy farmers. The ordinary small farmer is unable constantly to renew his cows, as he would have to do if he engaged in cow testing. That is one drawback in the matter.

There is another drawback. If I prove to myself that a certain cow is bad, whatever theorists or scientists or anybody else may tell us, nobody has yet devised a method that will assure me that, having got rid of a bad or dud cow, and having gone into the question of the double dairy bull and the double dairy cow, the heifer I purchase will not be another dud or will be beyond the dividing line between a bad and a good cow. These are some of the difficulties that the theorists do not understand. The industry is subject to many difficulties to which no other industry is subject. Nature plays too big a part in it. The greatest judge of a dairy cow in this or any other country will be as often wrong as right in his opinion as to the milk production of a particular cow.

Then we come to the question of disease. If some remedy could be found for one disease alone, namely, contagious abortion, the whole position of the dairy farmer would be revolutionised at once. It would make all the difference between the profitable carrying on of dairying and the unprofitable. So far no remedy has been found for that disease. I am glad that the Minister made reference to veterinary research when speaking yesterday. He intimated that it was intended to spend a larger amount of money on that than has been hitherto possible. When the Government set out to expend money on veterinary research, I hope that they will open their pockets and that we will set about it on lines which no other country can attempt to better; that we will engage the best experts in this country and, if possible, get the best experts outside this country at salaries sufficiently attractive to keep them here investigating this disease and kindred diseases; pay them such salaries as will attract them here so as to make scientific investigations into all these diseases, and attract students in our universities here to engage in scientific investigation on this basis. I have some opinion of the brains of the people of this little State of ours. We have in this country and we will have in the future young men leaving our colleges here, men trained in science, who will be attracted by the more favourable conditions in other countries if we ourselves do not make positions here that will keep them here. I hope that we in this country will provide such a sum of money for veterinary research as will attract not alone the students trained in science here but some of the best experts from other countries as well.

Finally, I should like to say this: a great deal has been preached to the farmer, in this House and outside it, on his reluctance to get out of the old set groove and to follow modern methods—to engage in more scientific operations on his farm. That is all to the good. We all have something to learn from the scientists, and from the march of time, but when anybody starts to libel the Irish farmer as being himself incapable of imbibing the knowledge which is put at his disposal, then I for one will resent it.

While all this scientific teaching is useful, while theoretical lectures and other appeals to the farmers have their uses, in the end it is the practical demonstration of the results of those scientific investigations that will make any appeal whatsoever to the ordinary farmer. One ounce of practical demonstration is worth a ton of theory. If we could get together, through the Department of Agriculture, a combination of what the scientists teach and the theorists preach, and if it is argued that they are right, then there should be no hesitation whatever in putting it into practice. There is an easy way of putting it into practice. It is a very rough-and-ready way. Let the Department themselves take up an ordinary farm in one of the dairying districts, or alternatively, let them get some farmer in one of those dairying districts to undertake the work in some place readily accessible to the general run of farmers, and put into operation there the theories that are preached and the scientific teachings that are available. Let them be put into effect on this particular farm. As I said, the Government could either do it themselves or let some particular farmer do it, with a guarantee that he is not going to lose. Having done this, let them purchase a number of cows or heifers in the same way as the ordinary farmer at present purchases them, that is, by going into a fair or market and buying the best cow or heifer you can get, having due regard to breeding and so on. Let the Department purchase an ordinarily good herd and start operations there, and then prove—it might take three or four years but it is worth it—by practical demonstration that they have raised the yield of that herd by, say, 200 or 300 gallons. Incidentally, let them engage in the rearing of calves, pigs and poultry, and prove that all those things can be done better than the ordinary farmer is doing them now. Each year as they go on, let them produce a balance-sheet showing that there is a certain profit by engaging in the new methods and by following the advice of the scientists and others. If that is done, in three or four years you will revolutionise agriculture in this country, but you will not do it by preaching in the Dáil or on the hilltops that the Irish farmer is incapable of imbibing the knowledge which scientists in this and other countries are preaching at him. It should not be impossible to do this.

It will not cost the State very much to undertake those operations in each dairying district. If there is any truth in the general preaching that the farmer is doing his work badly, then it is easily remedied. If one of those farms in any one year shows a profit beyond what the ordinary farmer is getting, then, as a man who represents the dairy farmer in this country, I will guarantee that you will have hundreds following suit. In the meantime, whether that suggestion is adopted or not, we in this House cannot let an industry like the dairying industry suddenly drop out of existence until we have something else to take its place. Whatever the years which follow the war may bring, I for one— I believe I am not alone in that opinion—believe that dairy farming and the production of live stock will be an essential portion of our economy. It is up to the Minister, to the Department which advises him, and to every Deputy in this House, to see that the decline which is now in progress, and which was admitted even by the Minister yesterday, is arrested at once. Otherwise, one can only take a pessimistic view of the future, and I refuse to do that.

As this debate is going to be a very long one, I want to try to avoid as far as possible repeating observations which have been made by other members of the House. I propose to abbreviate my remarks. It has generally been admitted that, in connection with all post-war agricultural developments, we will have to improve our output and efficiency. No member of the House disagrees with that proposition. A study of the statistics of production in respect of those who compete with us in the foreign market would serve to prove the necessity for that increase in output. I agree with Deputy Bennett that it is most unwise to theorise too much, and all one can say from a study of all the statistics available, without being confused by them or going into them too deeply, is that we are in the second grade of efficiency rate. We are not very low down. We are not amongst the first grade of nations producing live stock, cereals, dairy products and pig products. We are near the first grade in certain forms of production, but generally speaking we are not in the first grade, although we could quite easily reach it by concerted effort on the part of everybody in the country. In other words, the position is not in the least hopeless. It is simply one that requires a long-term plan of improvement, giving confidence to the agricultural community —a policy which is accepted, generally speaking, by all members of the House.

Taking those conditions at present, I am not in the least pessimistic with regard to our capacity in the future to produce efficiently and compete in any market. Moreover, I think it is true to say that many of the disadvantages from which we suffer in this country obtained also in other countries. Farmers in other countries have been through world crises of great magnitude. They have all complained of the prices they were receiving. They have all complained that they were unable to obtain sufficient capital to improve their machinery. They lacked the opportunities that would enable them to make a profit on the capital invested in their farms. To that extent, farmers all over the world suffered more or less equally. We have to recognise then that we have to step up our production, and that it is not an impossible task. Let me give a rough estimate of what that means in terms of an intensive study that I have made of farms and of production in Athlone and Longford during the past five years. I have consulted a great many farmers. I would say that 5 per cent. of the farms in that constituency are equipped absolutely in the fullest sense to face up to post-war competition; about 45 per cent. are fairly well equipped. I should say that they require greater equipment in respect to machinery and in the knowledge possessed by the farmers' sons. I should say that 50 per cent. of the farms require a very great deal of improved equipment to enable them to compete successfully in the post-war period. These figures are only approximate.

We in this country have shown a steady, if slow, improvement in the last 20 years. Other countries have improved, and for reasons that we need not go into now, rather more rapidly than we have. We have, therefore, in the post-war period to step up our production. If we do that, I think we should be in a satisfactory position. On the question of post-war policy in general, I think we have learned enough from trade cycles in this country to realise that whatever we do in the way of industrial or agricultural expansion our home consumption and exports are inextricably linked.

All of us realise now that if you expand production you also expand the demand for special equipment and, in many cases, for raw materials. If you have a very large agricultural income from a farm, even under the most ideal conditions only a small proportion of the increased produce will be absorbed by the home market. The rest will have to be exported as a surplus. In fact, it is possible to have a policy of general expansion without interfering either with the industrial policy of the Government or with the policy of increased exports. That point has been very well summarised by the Minister for Industry and Commerce in the 1943 July number of The Banker—a British magazine—in which he said on page 39:—

"From the Irish point of view, Eire's future prosperity is largely bound up with that of the agricultural community and Irish agriculture can expand only through exports."

Recognising the need for an improvement in our economy, and examining the future in an entirely speculative way, it is quite obvious that there will be two periods. For about ten years after the war ends there will be a period of scarcity in which we will have an unrivalled opportunity of breaking into new specialised markets. I should also like to stress the importance of the comparatively short period, when hostilities end, in which we shall have a special market for pedigree stock, for plants of high quality, seed potatoes, the horse industry and all products related to foods with a high protective value. That temporary opportunity will not last long. It will afford us an opportunity of exploiting new markets in respect of those commodities. It is possible that we may be able to develop a permanent market in certain instances if we take advantage of the position offered to us.

I should say that for at least ten years after the war there will be an absolutely indefinite market for seed potatoes. Most countries will be unable to obtain supplies. Up to now the seed potato industry has been stimulated by normal methods: special inspectors, subsidies, the provision of special instruction and a more or less organised marketing system. After the war that market will provide an enormous opportunity and it would be a pity if the Government failed to take advantage of it.

In order to deal with it it may be necessary to set up a seed potato board constructed on the lines of the Electricity Supply Board, a board composed of people whose duty it would be to expand seed potato development in every possible way and by every possible means. I believe that is a market that we should be able to hold even after the period of scarcity is over. Following that temporary period there will come, it is quite evident, a period of hard competition. The competition that we had to face before the outbreak of war will then be resumed and probably relatively lower prices will obtain while a higher quality than ever will be demanded of those who import into their country the agricultural produce that we have to sell. We have the time now to prepare for that period of competition. I refuse to be pessimistic about the future of agriculture if we take advantage of that interim period and prepare our plans for a higher output and greater production per acre. It is essential, to my mind, that we should not lose the opportunity given to us because, as I have said, for a considerable period after the war there will be a world scarcity of all foodstuffs.

To get down to the practical suggestions that were asked for by the Minister for Agriculture, I want to say that the most difficult problem will be that relating to the development of scientific agriculture. I agree with a considerable amount of what Deputy Hughes said on that. I think we have to face the facts that we shall not be able to develop a sound agriculture until we obtain the confidence of the farmer. The Government, of course, will have to give a certain lead, but at least 75 per cent. of the effort will have to be made by the farmer himself. We shall need to change from the extensive method of farming to which we have been accustomed to an intensive method. I do not blame the farmer for being conservative about making a change of that sort. We have to face the fact that he has been conservative because the extensive system of farming has paid him for years and years. To put the point in a different way: the risk to the farmer in changing from the old extensive system of agriculture to an intensive system is too great to warrant him making the change. He first of all needs conviction and confidence. It is the duty of those who study agriculture, both practically and theoretically—those who are the leaders of agriculture throughout the country— to provide the necessary leadership. But as long as we have production by individual farmers it is the agricultural community that will have to take the principal steps, aided and assisted by the Government.

I think it is very important that members should realise the reasons lying behind the extensive methods of agriculture. Up to now, since 1920, the farmers have had to face constantly falling prices. They have had to take part in every national crisis affecting our international relations. They have seen a negligible interest in the form of a return on their capital. They find it very easy to place their savings in the non-agricultural sphere and to obtain a certain interest on these savings upon which they can rely. If they have been successful in that respect they have found, taking all in all, and allowing for world fluctuations, that it pays them to purchase more land instead of investing their profits in highly intensive cultivation of their holdings. Then again, the emigration door has always been open. As a result, there has been a very slow, steady improvement, but the farmer has naturally been reluctant to make a capital investment—that is, if he had the capital—or to go into scientific farming, and he would need a very great amount of conviction before doing so.

I am quite convinced that the potential intelligence of the farming community is more than sufficient to make the changes desired, providing those who ask for the changes are convincing in their arguments. The facts are that there has been a very considerable distance between the farmer and the Department of Agriculture; their relations are distant and the two parties must be brought together before any development can take place. A very small section of the farmers has been really inspired by the Department, and unless the numbers of farmers in touch with the work of the Department of Agriculture and Government leadership are increased, we shall not achieve the success we hope for.

We have had various proposals put forward in the House. One suggestion for the improvement of agriculture is the payment of subsidies. Certain subsidies for agricultural produce already exist, and members of the House know very well what they are. I regard them as a useful cash encouragement, as a provision of extra liquid working capital and nothing else, and any extension of subsidies in the form of guaranteed prices for export or in the form of subsidies for tillage would simply drive a farmer into thinking not in terms of increased total income per acre, but of increase in the income he receives per unit of production.

Agriculture will never reach a fully competitive position unless we think from now onward in terms of an increased income per acre and not necessarily in the form of an increase per unit of commodity. We have to depend on world prices, very largely. We can introduce cash prices in respect of certain commodities, as the present Government has done, but we really depend on world prices, and therefore we must consider the efficiency of our output. We cannot rely ultimately on subsidies.

I heard Deputies of the Farmers' Party suggesting guaranteed prices for export. The Minister who could fix the figure at which the price for live stock would be stabilised would be a genius. If the price index for agriculture in 1939 is counted as 100, then it has very nearly reached 200. The question arises, at what figure should the Minister stabilise export prices? Should it be the figure for 1938, for 1937 or for 1942, and if he does stabilise the figure at a certain price, what happens to the profits when the price of cattle is above that figure, and what happens to the losses when the price is below that figure? Again, as regards a guaranteed export price, could we be sure of some collaboration between ourselves and the British, because it would seem to me that that would require to be agreed on—some vague level of price for the future to carry on with?

If we do have a guaranteed export price for our live stock, our farmers will have to realise that the free market is gone for ever. Under such conditions we would see a system of standardisation which would stagger the minds of the farmers who voted for the members of the Farmers' Party who now suggest a guaranteed export price for cattle. I think possibly ten years from now the whole world may go in for stabilisation of prices for agricultural produce. It depends on how far there will be world stability, and on many other factors. Obviously, this country can hardly do it in a unilateral way unless there is some way of envisaging what the world prices are likely to be over a considerable period.

Having dealt with the general position of agriculture, I should like to make a few suggestions to the Minister, although I am quite sure most of them have occurred to him already. If anything I have said will encourage him to further investigation, I feel that my words will not have been in vain. First of all, on the question of education, the more one makes a study of agricultural education in other countries, the more one is struck by the fact that in many of the countries that rival us in our export trade, education is done by the farmers themselves. There does not seem to be a very great desire on the part of farmers to take formal instruction in agriculture in any country. In Denmark, for example, which is so often cited to us, they have a school education which does not consist of agricultural education; it consists of education of a kind to inspire the Danish youth to be good citizens, and it does not consist in definite technical instruction. The farmers apprentice their sons to other farmers, and in that way they learn the most up-to-date methods of farming. I cannot say that there is any highly developed agricultural instruction in the sense that every farmer's son goes to school for a period.

The next point is that we are assured by our education authorities that the primary curriculum is full, and if rural science is to be taught—the basic facts of agricultural science—it must be taught beyond the primary school age. The next factor is, as Deputy Bennett said, that we need more practical demonstrations than theoretical ideas in order to bring about a change in our agricultural production.

Agriculture has become a very complex science, a science of a kind hardly dreamed of 100 years ago. Nevertheless, as Deputy Bennett said, we need more practical demonstrations. I suggest that the Minister should consider preparing for far more education in the form of travelling vans with proper modern film apparatus for the purpose of giving instruction in the schools. That is one method by which the instructor could link practice with theory. If the people could see the work done on the film about which the instructor is talking. relate theory to practice and see the cash value of improved agricultural methods shown in simple graphic form on the film, it would do more than anything else to impress on them the necessity for more scientific methods. I am told that film instruction in other countries has proved highly successful, in that, although it does not actually show what might be described as agricultural practice, it nevertheless relates practice to theory in a way in which no other medium of instruction can.

Next, I should like to suggest that a great many of the Department's leaflets require re-writing in the light of modern conditions. The information in them is perfectly correct, but our farmers, like any other group of people, are susceptible to modern methods of advertising. The instruction in these leaflets is not sufficiently colourful. I have seen it better done in other countries. There is not half enough illustration of the cash value of the recommendations made in the leaflets. I have seen a great many of these leaflets—I have read at least three-quarters of the combined book of leaflets—and there are a great many occasions on which the practical cash value of these improvements could be indicated in simple graphic form for farmers to appreciate. Instead of that the leaflets make only general recommendations as to the steps and no attempt is made to show the practical value of these steps.

I think the Government should start the experiment of offering free instruction courses in practical and theoretical agriculture for six-monthly periods to young men between the ages of 15 and 18. I think there will have to be an extension of the agricultural college system, and although, as I have said, I do not believe that agricultural instruction can be easily popularised, because many farmers prefer to learn on the land, I do think that an experiment, even in one county, would prove valuable and the results could be seen.

I should like to ask the Minister also what his present views are with regard to this whole controversy about demonstration farms. I am inclined to agree with Deputy Bennett when he says that a farm run by the Department of Agriculture, or a demonstration plot, while valuable in many respects, is not as valuable as a farm run by someone selected by the Department in the ordinary way to work the farm on the most modern methods and to keep accounts so that the results could be seen and published and made available to farmers in the same district.

I should like to ask the Minister what he thinks about the problem because obviously it will be very difficult to run any farm on a partly free basis. Anybody who thinks of the basis on which it has to be run—what kind of individual to select, to what extent he is to be free, to what extent he is to be advised, what capital should be given to him when he starts—will see immediately that it is all very well to talk about having demonstration farms run by farmers, but when it comes to the starting of them, a great many technical difficulties arise. I should like to ask the Minister if he has examined the matter and what his conclusions were.

I think the next step in agricultural development in the future lies in subsidies and loans to encourage better production. I do not believe in subsidies on the sale of the produce, and I believe that it is going to cost at least £100,000,000, at the very minimum, to modernise agriculture in this country, taking into account the provision of machinery and the working capital necessary for the adoption of modern conditions. I think that, so far as it is practicable, it is better to spend money in encouraging the agricultural community to purchase modern machinery at cheaper rates, in encouraging them to use fertilisers and to reclaim their land, as is done at present under the land improvement scheme, than to lend money which has to be paid back.

I am not averse from the idea of agricultural credit, but agricultural credit which can be furnished in the form of subsidies on equipment rather than in the form of loans would, to my mind, be a great advantage. I believe that, particularly when the war is over, we shall have to give subsidies on a great many forms of equipment and shall have to give loans and grants for better outhouses and for improving the whole equipment of our farming community.

The next matter is the question of the improvement in our veterinary services, and I was glad to hear from the Minister that the whole matter was under consideration. From a pamphlet written by one of our veterinary surgeons, Professor Kearney, it would seem that the total loss from the principal diseases to which live stock are subject amounts to something in the region of £4,000,000 per year. I should say that that would be the minimum and that one could safely say that it approximately amounts to £4,000,000 a year, in the form of loss of live stock and loss of the milk which would be taken from the live stock. That is a colossal figure, and I am certain that when the post-emergency agricultural committee reports on the matter it will be found that it is approximately correct and certainly not far off the correct figure. It will thus be seen that we need a very great improvement in our veterinary service.

There is not half the number of veterinary surgeons per thousand farms in this country that there is in other countries rivalling us. To my mind, there ought to be centres in which the veterinary surgeon would be available to farmers on different days of each week. I think the Government should investigate also some form of veterinary insurance, under which, by payment of a small fee each year, based on the number of cows possessed by each farmer, it might be possible to arrange for free veterinary service. I understand that a scheme of that kind is working very satisfactorily in parts of England, and certainly something should be done to stimulate the ease with which veterinary services can be obtained and also to undertake researches for the elimination of live-stock diseases.

We come then to the questions relating to giving the farmers encouragement to take measures for improved production by offering premiums of various kinds. I should like the Minister to consider whether in connection with the dairying industry it would not be possible—perhaps not now but later on—to offer premiums, such as have been offered in connection with wheat, for subsidised fertilisers to farmers who carry out certain improvements in their dairy farms. For example, a farmer who is a member of a cow-testing association might have a greater subsidy for the purchase of his artificial manures than a farmer who did not belong to such an association, and farmers who carried out other improvements and who operated their dairy farms in a certain way could be given these premiums. I believe a lot could be done in that direction.

We come then to the question of the encouragement of special forms of production. I do hope, as I have said, that the Government will investigate the question of seed potatoes and will carry out an investigation of all the special forms of production which may relate to a post-war export trade, such as pedigree stock, plants of special varieties and the production of better cheeses. One of the most remarkable things is that, since the war, one can obtain in this country about 20 cheeses unrivalled in any country in the world but which are made in absolutely negligible quantities by a few devoted souls—in certain cases, individuals and, in others, communities of nuns.

These are just small people who have produced about 20 varieties of cheeses which rival the great cheeses of France, but the production of which is negligible. They cannot fill even the home demand, but there is absolutely no reason why we should not develop a world trade in these cheeses, provided the people are instructed in their production and provided the necessary capital and equipment are made available.

At least five of these cheeses are produced in negligible quantities by the good lady who spends part of her time lecturing on producing them. Quite obviously something needs to be done in these cases. If the Government could stimulate production of these special forms of agriculture which not only advertise our agriculture all over the world but could add to our production, it would be a very valuable thing. It would also be to advantage if small factories in Dublin and elsewhere were started to make vitamin concentrates—products of malt—on a purely experimental basis. After the war there is going to be a big demand for vitamin concentrates all over the world and I think that also ought to be investigated as well.

Before the war we had negotiations with the Brazilian Government in connection with their exports of maize. Previous to that we bought most of our maize from the Argentine, to the value of about £1,000,000 cash. We sold the Argentine £1,000 worth of goods and paid the balance by way of dividends on English securities. There is no harm in that provided the dividends are still there after the war and provided we have the same free use of British currency as we had before the war, and provided that the British will allow us to have the same use of currency as before the war, all of which is a very doubtful proposition.

We were offered a trade pact by the Brazilian Government by which we would take a proportion of three units imports from Brazil to two units exported to Brazil. We were offered maize of good quality provided we sold the Brazilians seed potatoes and young pedigree bulls. The scheme broke down for an entirely artificial reason, the existence of the fluctuating milreis as the unit of Brazilian currency which depended almost entirely on the price of coffee. I realise that the Government were probably right in turning down the scheme at the time but I do not think we should be able to afford in future to turn down a proposition of that kind.

I think world conditions will compel us to investigate these matters, to investigate these special types of exports and to overcome conditions of fluctuating currency in so far as they can be overcome. I realise, of course, that it might also be argued that we could not produce sufficient quantities of potatoes and of young pedigree bulls to make up our export quota and that there might be difficulties on that account, but I think the Government should consider the establishment of an export marketing board so that there could be special investigation of special forms of export.

Another problem I should like the Minister to consider is in connection with overcoming some of the drudgery of farm life. I do not believe that the young people of this country, any more than any other country, are going to be willing to go in for the same degree of great physical exertion involved in farming that they did before the war. That is part of the world progress. It may not be considered good by some people, but machinery is entering into the whole field of production now and I should like to ask the Minister whether he has considered the formation of machinery centres. We have heard a lot of talk about machinery centres elsewhere and there are quite obviously great practical difficulties in connection with their operation. If the Government were to start a machinery centre where there are middle-sized and small farms there would be the problem of considering the class of machinery to be used, what system would be used to provide for rotation among the users and how the machinery might be used co-operatively. I believe these difficulties could be overcome. I believe it is worth while trying, by way of experiment, a machinery centre where the machinery could be run on the rotation basis, even where provision would have to be made for a mechanic to keep it in order. It is certainly worth an experiment and might even be tried on a small scale now. At the same time it would stimulate co-operation in the farming community.

I should like to ask the Minister whether he has made investigations into the first Young Farmers' Club in the Twenty-Six Counties, which has been started. I understand, by a Mr. Spain, an agricultural instructor, in Kilmallock. I obtained the literature of the Young Farmers' Club in Great Britain, and I have been given the pleasant surprise of finding that there was a number of these clubs in existence in the westerly part of Northern Ireland, among people who are exactly similar to our own people, who are under the same influences and the same traditions. In Northern Ireland these farmers' clubs have been tried out and they are doing quite well and if farmers' clubs can be successful in Northern Ireland, I think they can also be successful here. It is a matter worth considering. The only way we are ever going to develop agriculture is by stimulating the interest of the young people. The elderly man has seen so many difficulties and developments in his lifetime that he is not likely to make sudden changes but we can stimulate the young people. I should like to ask the Minister if he knows of the existence of the club in Kilmallock and whether he will consider taking steps to see whether these young farmers' clubs could be set up as an experiment in the country. The clubs I speak of have done very good work. The young farmers attend them, there is a discussion on agricultural matters, debates and a question time. They get prizes for these discussions. Secondly, they have competitions in the growing of cereals on plots, competitions in the rearing of calves and in regard to lambs, sheep and poultry. Prizes are offered for these. The Government could help in these matters by seeing that farmers' clubs should conform to a certain type, that there should be certain minimum regulations and they might agree to offer prizes or money for prizes. I think it is an experiment well worth trying. I have made investigations and I have found that there are at least three very successful clubs in Northern Ireland. The work of the clubs consists of social intercourse for the purposes of discussing farming problems, debates and discussions and then, the practical side, in the development of competitions. If existing organisations such as Muintir na Tire can do this work well and good, but I think it is an experiment worth trying for a time at any rate, an experiment which might well be stimulated by the Government.

Another problem affecting the future of agriculture is the new science of grass cultivation. I must confess that the complexity of it is beyond me. I have read about half a dozen books, and I have walked continuously, week after week, in one of the farms where it is practised. I have examined it. There is the application of grass strains to particular lands, linked with the use of artificial manures, ensilage, and with such things as very dense rotational grazing. It is a very complicated science, and I realise that it is becoming universal all over the world. It seems to me that we might begin to develop research in relation to that in the future. I cannot believe that we can apply the English discoveries to this country without seeing how they work out. If there is a research station at Aberystwith where they produce hundreds of varieties of grasses for different soils, will the Minister let us know whether it is possible to consider the setting up of a research station here to apply the Aberystwith methods for grass cultivation to this country, and to see how far we can get going with something that we can actually achieve, something which could be worked out practically for this country. I realise, as the Minister said in a former debate, that any steps taken would be extremely slow, that at the rate at which we can produce these new and valuable grass strains, it would take years and years, and that it would take a tremendously long time to bring about any noticeable improvement in the grass strains of the country. But the sooner we begin the better for agriculture.

I should like to close by observing that the Government have taken very valuable steps in the last ten years in the direction of improving agriculture. Because of the conflict we had with Great Britain, the Minister has very often been the butt of most unmerited criticism. Whether or not the economic war with England was justified, I think it is up to the members of this Party to recall the fact that very considerable fundamental steps were taken in the past ten years for agricultural improvement.

We have now reached the point where we have to take very many more fundamental steps for agricultural improvement, but they are all part of continuous progress. I should like to recall that we did secure the farmer, to some degree, against fluctuating world markets by providing a home market with certain guaranteed prices; that we did revalue, to a certain degree, the effects of taxation by modifying the annuities and by derating; that we did carry out the system now in vogue in England of insisting on good husbandry for farmers above a certain acreage by dividing up farms that were badly run amongst uneconomic landholders; that we carried on the work of the last Government in connection with the grading of produce; that the steps taken by the Government for grading eggs had been of immense value to our poultry trade before the war; that recently we took valuable steps for grading fruit and improving the fruit market; that we carried out legislation to improve the cleanliness of milk and the production of milk, although we are far from the perfect road in that respect; that we also took steps to deal with the diseases of animals by a number of Acts to control the use of animal veterinary medicines. We have now started on long-term schemes of drainage and rural electrification. We have helped in the expansion of seed potato production. We have improved agricultural teaching in secondary schools and increased the number of instructors in the country. We have increased the grants for almost every form of agriculture that could be mentioned and we initiated grants and loans for the purchase of agricultural implements. We have helped to stimulate the production of flax. What is perhaps almost more valuable than anything else, we have initiated the land improvement scheme, under which 18,000 farmers have improved their lands, and we are spending money at the rate of nearly £400,000 per year on that service.

I think all of us are satisfied, allowing for the fact that conditions will be more difficult than before when the period of scarcity is over, that we must make far greater efforts towards improving our agricultural production and that, whatever we did in the past ten years, we will have far surpassed it in the next ten years if we are to place agriculture on absolutely sound foundations.

I should like particularly to call the attention of the Minister again to the question of machinery centres, the question of subsidising young farmers' clubs, and the development and increase of veterinary services. There is also the question of whether the Minister thinks that the most modern type of travelling films should be introduced as an ancillary to agricultural instruction in schools.

Deputy Childers made a very interesting speech, but I am afraid he spoiled it in the last paragraph or two by praising the Fianna Fáil policy and what it had done for the farmer. I was very interested in his speech up to that. As to the latter part of his speech, I can put the position in a nutshell by saying that after ten years of Fianna Fáil policy our farmers were never so poor at any time in the history of this country. This agricultural Estimate is one of the most important that comes before the Dáil. It is an Estimate on which we expect every farmer Deputy to contribute something, whether he belongs to the Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, or Farmers' Party. It is more important now than ever before. I listened to the debate yesterday and to-day and I was very disappointed with the new Farmers' Party. I expected to hear a lot from them. I never said anything to them before, but I want to say now that I was very disappointed with them, because it is up to the Farmers' Party on this Estimate to put before the Minister and the Department of Agriculture what they know about agriculture. They may know certain things which would be very useful in this emergency. Therefore, I would ask the Farmers' Party to get out of the rut in which they have been for the past two days and contribute to this debate. Like the occasion on which the Minister for Agriculture was reappointed, they have been very quiet. I do not know why. It is their duty to contribute to this debate and to tell us what they think. I hope they will forgive me, but I could not refrain from saying that.

I was very interested in the speech of Deputy O'Reilly and I was very glad to hear him speaking about what happened in Meath and Westmeath with regard to the grain crops for the last couple of years. For two years I have been bringing to the notice of the Government that thousands of tons of grain have been lost in Meath and Westmeath. I was very glad that Deputy O'Reilly had the courage to speak about that to-day. It was heartbreaking to go around Meath and Westmeath during the last two harvests and see the thousands of tons of grain going to loss for want of harvesting machinery and looking after. There are fields in Meath and Westmeath that had not to be ploughed up or sown this year; the farmers had nothing to do but to leave them there and the crops are now growing on them. I know three or four such fields of ten or 20 acres in extent in Westmeath, and I am told that there are also several in Meath.

Deputy O'Reilly had not the courage of his convictions. He said we should not blame the Government for that. I definitely blame the Government for it. Deputy O'Reilly himself mentioned in his speech here to-night that he saw young fellows going around the country on bicycles when the harvest was being lost. If that was so, it was the Government's duty to pass an emergency Order and put those men out to save the harvest.

And give them a good week's wages.

You will find that the farmers of Meath and Westmeath pay them far more than the fixed wage. They were glad to get them and to pay them 10/- or 15/- a day, so the Labour Party can have no complaint as regards the farmers there. It was not an uncommon thing during the harvest to have to pay men 10/- and 15/- a day. The Minister yesterday referred to 100 binders. Those binders should be sent to Meath and Westmeath and other non-tillage counties. Deputy O'Reilly mentioned here to-night that Wexford had so many thousand working horses, and he contrasted that with the numbers in Meath and Westmeath which are far bigger. That is a point which the Minister should bear in mind, that the farmers in Meath and Westmeath are short of implements, and that whatever machinery comes in should be sent to those non-tillage counties, regardless of anything else. If there are 40,000 working horses in County Wexford—I am not sure, but I think that is the number which was mentioned—no new implements should go in there, because they are a tillage county, and they and other tillage counties have their implements. In the town of Mullingar you could not get a sock for a plough, but if you send a man on a bicycle up to Tullamore or to Laoighis, you can get all the socks you want. When the Minister came down to Mullingar we pointed that out to him, and he promised to remedy that matter.

A leading hardware merchant in the town of Mullingar mentioned four plough points as the quota for the month of January, and we had to send to Offaly and Laoighis, where there were hundreds of them. That is bad organisation. I know that the Government has a big job to do, but those are matters which have to be faced. The most important thing is that any machinery which comes in this year should be given to the non-tillage counties. There may be complaints from the tillage counties that their tractors are wearing out. Those tractors should be mended and kept going. I know parish after parish in Meath and Westmeath where there is not one binder. It is pitiable at harvest time to see the waste that is going on. I spoke about it here two years ago, and a Deputy from Connacht—at the moment I cannot remember his name —said: "Let the men of Connacht go out and they will till your land for you." That is all the answer I got from Fianna Fáil. That sort of thing is all wrong. Any Fianna Fáil Deputy who spoke, except Deputy O'Reilly, referred to what Fianna Fáil had done for the last ten years. Those are not the things to be bringing up now. Deputy Childers spoiled his speech by speaking about Fianna Fáil policy for the last ten minutes. The present needs of the country are the important thing. In Westmeath you have threshing mills going through the county. There is supposed to be a system of licensing threshing mills. I think 10/- is the cost of the licence. What good is that, when those threshing mills are robbing the farmers? Look at any farmer's haggard in Meath or Westmeath, and if you have had a week's rain after the threshing you will find green wheat. If a man has to pay a licence for a threshing mill, an inspector should be sent down to see that the threshing mill is in order, so that the farmers will not be robbed.

We heard a lot about the shortage of seed wheat. I blame the Government for that. I brought the matter up here last year and we were told we would have plenty of seed wheat. The Government should have known that there was a shortage. They could have discovered that by a very simple bit of adding and subtracting. They have seed assemblers who are supposed to be licensed.

If they control those seed assemblers, they should have known how many tons of wheat they had available. They would know, through their tillage inspectors, the number of acres of wheat that had to be sown. They are not in the dark about that, because the tillage inspectors have been out for the last two years, and they know the acreage of wheat which has to be sown by the farmers. The farmers are asked now to sow Manitoba wheat. They do not know what it is. Yesterday, from Mullingar, a farmer wrote to me to ask if I could get him two barrels of Atle wheat. It is not to be got. A merchant in Mullingar had a mixture of seed wheat. It is not fair to the farmers that there should be such a shortage, and I think the Government are to blame for that. I cannot see how they did not know what the position was. There are registered wheat assemblers. They knew the number of acres of wheat that had to be grown in the country, and there should have been no shortage of seed at the last moment.

There is another important matter as regards tillage, and that is, the charge for hire of ploughs. I cannot see why the Minister does not fix the charge for tractor ploughs. There are poor farmers who are being totally robbed in that regard. Up to £3 an acre is being charged for hire. One poor widow came to me about a fortnight ago. She had five acres of tillage to do, and she had not the £15 to pay out for tractor hire. I think there should be some means of helping those people. There should be a fixed charge for tractor ploughs. They have it in the North of Ireland; as far as I know, for the last two or three years, there is a fixed charge of so much per acre, and I cannot see why the same practice does not apply in this part of the country. I hope the Minister will see to it that, when those new implements come in, a fair share will be given to those counties that were non-tillage, because it is deplorable to see the amount of wheat and oats that were lost last year.

As regards beet, I do not know why we are so badly treated in the midlands. If we are to be encouraged to get into tillage, we should be encouraged to grow a rotation crop, and as far as I know beet is a good rotation crop, but it is not a paying crop for the farmers of Meath and Westmeath. Some farmers have to pay 22/- or 23/- per ton to deliver their beet to the factory. I myself have to pay 17/4 per ton. I am allowed only 2/- off that. I do not see why the farmers of Meath and Westmeath do not get the same subsidy as every other farmer in Ireland. The farmers of Meath and Westmeath are switched on to the Carlow factory. They get only 2/- subsidy. Every other farmer in Ireland who goes to the other beet factories gets away at a lower figure. The total cost in one factory is 6/- per ton for delivery, but we in the midlands are victimised by having to pay from 18/- to 23/- and 24/-. During the last two or three seasons we have tried to get rid of that anomaly. The beet crop is one that requires good husbandry to sow it; it is a good crop, but we are not encouraged to sow it. It is advertised that the farmers are getting £4 a ton for their beet. I myself had ten tons to the statute acre, but I got only 58/- for it. When I paid my labour out of that, when I paid for manures and everything else, I was at a loss.

As regards pigs, I am glad that the Pigs and Bacon Board are no longer controlling prices. We have been urging that for years. The strange thing is that there appears to be no change in the price which the shops are charging for bacon. Pigs are realising 160/- and 170/- per cwt., and the price of bacon in the shops is the same now as it was when the farmer was only getting the controlled price of 108/- per cwt. That shows how he was robbed years ago by the Pigs and Bacon Board. In my opinion we will have plenty of pigs in the country. People will go in for the feeding of them as long as it is a paying proposition. At the present time, some trouble is being caused at fairs owing to the system of quotas which is being operated by the Pigs and Bacon Board. If the word goes round that such and such a factory has its quota filled the demand falls away. All these quotas should be removed.

With regard to milk and butter, milk does not affect the county that I come from very much. As a practical farmer, I would not go in for dairying at the present time. I do not think it is a paying proposition. As somebody has said, if the dairy farmer in the south does not get 1/- a gallon for milk he has an easy way out, and that is to stick on two calves to a cow. The people will then be without their butter supply. I would advise the Government that if they want to have butter they ought to give a price for it. They should not be pig-headed by refusing to give the extra 1½d. a gallon during the summer. If they do that, I think it will be an encouragement to the dairy farmers to produce butter. I do not want to insult dairy farmers, but I have always thought that they have a lazy way of farming in the south— getting up at 5 o'clock in the morning, milking the cows, and then smoking their pipe until the afternoon, when they have to milk again. I think that the system in our county is the better one, where you have the separator and the drop of cream. The farmer's daughter makes the butter, so that under that system you have a little industry being run in every farmer's house.

The Minister referred to the export of heifers. I am glad that he has no intention of interfering with their export. If the export of dairy heifers was stopped, it would mean lowering the number of them in the country. It would also mean putting a premium on the black and on the Hereford heifer. In the end, the result would be that we would have no dairy heifers in the country. No attention should be paid to all the talk that we hear of heifers going out of the country. The quota is never filled, and as far as I know the licences for heifers have never been fully taken up. I think the Minister's attitude is right—to leave things alone.

I think Deputy Childers mentioned that some farmers thought there should be a fixed price for cattle exported. He said that should not be done, and I agree with him. We all had a sad experience when the present Government tried to have a fixed price for cattle. We remember when it was 21/- per cwt. I suppose they do not want to remember that period. Some of us had the experience of having 20 cattle on the Dublin market at that time. We had customers for nine or ten, and then some fellow would come along and offer 15/- a cwt. for the others. Of course, we were able to get the 21/-, the fixed price. There is no use in trying to fix a price for cattle, and I hope that the Minister will not do anything in that direction.

I was surprised to hear that there was no cow testing in the County Meath. We have it in the County Westmeath. The reason for its failure there was because the Government did not encourage it enough. The association there lost the very good inspector they had because it was impossible for him to travel all over the county on a bicycle. That man was surely entitled to a supply of petrol to enable him to do his work as an inspector. Deputy Bennett pointed out that the well-to-do farmer can afford to get rid of a bad milker, but the poor man cannot Therefore, the only way in which cow testing can be made a success is by giving help to the poor man. I do not know if a lot of the money allocated for advertising is being wisely spent. Then as regards the radio, as a practical farmer you cannot make much use of it when you will not be allowed to say what you think.

The Minister said that he estimated the profits of farmers since the outbreak of war at about £1 per person in respect of all people engaged on the land. I think his estimate is fair enough. It has been said that the farmer is getting big profits on some of the agricultural produce that he has to sell. If so he has to pay very big prices for farm implements and tools. An ordinary graip that the farmer used to be able to buy for 3/6 now costs 14/- or 15/-. A pair of plough chains that could be bought for 2/- or 3/-, now cost 14/- or 15/-. Farmers who live a distance away from the bogs are obliged to pay three times what is used to cost them for fuel. Some people seem to think that farmers are making great profits. So far as I can see there are no farmers making money out of this war. Therefore, I think that the estimate given by the Minister was a fair one.

There is one thing that, in my opinion, is doing harm and that is class distinctions. The Taoiseach mentioned the way in which farmers could help to provide food for the people in the towns. I agree with all that, but he brings back one bitter thing. He says that the townspeople stood to the farmers in the economic war. I maintain they did not stand to the farmers in the economic war. They lived on the free beef, and everything else that the poor old farmers had to give up, and the Taoiseach is wrong in bringing up these things. He should leave them alone. I submit that it is the farmers who are standing to the people in the towns, and they mean to. They produce the food for the townspeople. I do not want it to go out that the townspeople stood to the farmers in the economic war when they did not. They lived on the farmer's beef at 15/- a cwt. and they lived on the sheep and other agricultural products, but the people in the towns did not back up the farmers at that time. I will leave it at that.

I will ask the Minister to pay special attention to the distribution of farming implements that are coming into the country and to make a proper division as between the tillage and non-tillage areas. I should like to know how those implements have been distributed among the people. I suggest there should be an inventory made by the inspectors in every village and rural district and the binders and tractors should be fairly distributed through the country. They should not all be distributed in certain areas and the distribution should not be attended by any political influence. I can say that last year there was no political influence and I hope the same will apply this year. There should be no tillage district short of farming implements.

With regard to poultry and eggs, I suggest there is a good future for this country. We should like to know, in the country districts, the fixed price for eggs. No one in the country seems to know how much we are supposed to get for our eggs. In one place the price is 2/- a dozen and in another district the price may be lower. I think the Government should advertise the current price of eggs. I understand that the eggs are exported at a fixed price. That price should be advertised and in that way the people will be assured that they are not being fleeced. That would help to encourage poultry rearing. I suggest the Minister will be doing good work if he stimulates poultry rearing, because there is a great future in it. Denmark and other countries are going out of production, and if our Government were wise they would encourage poultry and help our farmers, no matter what it may cost.

I saw recently that, in America, they are able to produce day-old chicks by the million. Why would not our Government start something like that, have chicks produced by the million, and then send them round to the farmers? I submit that we must think in millions instead of in thousands if we are to capture the markets. I hope the Government will take serious notice of these matters. After the war I suggest our inspectors should be actively engaged finding out what markets are available in Europe and elsewhere for our agricultural products. These inspectors should make investigation in order to see what other countries may require in the way of cattle and farm produce generally.

Already in Canada they are making preparations for supplying England with live stock. Canada is ready to export 300,000 cattle to England. If we take sufficient interest in our livestock production we need not be afraid of what Canada proposes to do. I know that the Canadian cattle would not be very suitable for an English farmer. Those animals come over from the wilds of Canada and if they are let out in England the farmers will not know where to get them the next day. Our Government should be fully alive to the situation. As regards Canada, I know that clever men bought large farms and they thought they were going to make a fortune, but things did not work out that way and they did not make the money they expected to make. If we do not exercise care we may lose the markets we have. I know that our Government are alive to a lot of things, but I think it is necessary for them to be much more active. They should act on the principle that those who get in first usually get most.

I should like to know from the Minister what efforts, if any, have been made to ensure that farm labourers are paid the rate of wages stipulated by the Agricultural Wages Board. I know the majority of farmers are honourable men and they make every effort, if an order is made by the Agricultural Wages Board, to pay the wage that is stipulated. Unfortunately, however, there are some farmers who are not paying the stipulated wages. So far as I am aware, inspectors do not visit the different areas very often and it is only when a man is thrown out of his job that one finds out he has not been getting the wage laid down by the Agricultural Wages Board. I suggest the Minister should bring pressure to bear on the board so that they will have periodical inspections and that the books, if there are books, should be examined to make sure that these men are paid the stipulated wage. God knows the wages paid to agricultural labourers are small enough, and it is our duty to ensure that the proper wage is paid.

The Minister referred to the production of butter. Everyone must admit that there is a big improvement in the butter situation as compared with this time last year. There was a hold-up for a while before the increase of 4d. per lb. was imposed. Whether some people got the "tip" or not I do not know, but there was a hold-up for a few weeks prior to the increase in the price. There is every indication at the moment that there will be an increase in the price of milk. I hope if there is such an increase—and the farmers seem to be able to make a good case for that increase—steps will be taken to prevent it being passed on to the consumers, especially the poorer classes, who find it hard enough to purchase milk at the present price. As a matter of fact, a great many people who were inclined to use milk to a greater extent than usual have had to discontinue getting the increased amount because of the higher price within the last 12 months. I trust the Minister will take steps to see that any increase given to the farmers will not be passed on to the public. No doubt the increase will also be felt as regards butter.

Year after year I have mentioned one particular thing to the Minister. I even mentioned it to him when he was in Wexford addressing the county committee there, and I also mentioned it to the Minister for the Coordination of Defensive Measures. I refer to the supply of seeds and implements to persons in towns who have small gardens. Under some emergency scheme—I think there was a scheme even before the Emergency Powers Act came into operation—certain facilities are given to unemployed men. They get seeds and implements, but there are people in the provincial towns and cities who have plots of ground immediately at the rear of their houses who are in the same degree of need as those who are given plots. These people have repeatedly applied to the Minister for Agriculture and the Minister for Local Government for seeds to enable them to sow these plots, but up to this a deaf ear has been turned to their pleadings. I ask the Minister again to consider this matter, because it is very important. If these men who have been unemployed for a long time and who have gardens at the rear of their houses were given any help they would be prepared to till and sow in order to get very valuable food from them and I suggest that they are in the same degree of need as those who have been given plots.

The Minister, in the course of his address, mentioned the importance of poultry keeping. I think everybody will agree that it is a very important industry and that eggs are a very valuable food. I wonder has the Minister ever thought of extending the facilities given to poultry keepers in rural areas to some of our towns. There are people in the towns and cities who have large premises at the rear of their houses in which they could keep the poultry, and, with the present scarcity of eggs and the price eggs have reached, I suggest that it would be wise to extend these facilities to these people. Deputy Fagan is not aware of the price of eggs at present. He may not be, but unfortunately the poor people in the various towns are only too well aware of the high price they have to pay and have had to pay for the past six months.

The farmers may not be getting the benefit of the price being paid by the poor people in the towns, but certainly the price of a dozen of eggs during the last six or eight months has put them out of the reach of the ordinary person and I suggest that the Minister should consider the advisability of extending to urban dwellers the facilities given in rural areas by way of a grant towards the building of houses and such matters. I also want to suggest that there are not sufficient poultry instructresses on the road at present. I believe that if there were more of these in the employment of the various county committees of agriculture, more attention would be paid to poultry keeping by farmers and others.

Deputy Hughes yesterday complained that the wages paid by the farmer militated against a better milk supply. I cannot understand the statement of Deputy Hughes in that regard. Does he mean that, but for the fixing of hours and wages, men would be kept working for unlimited or undefined hours? Surely the farm labourer has been the hewer of wood and drawer of water for a considerable time and now, when he is getting a comparatively decent wage—I can only describe it as comparatively decent—it is surprising to hear Deputy Hughes complaining that they are not permitted to work unlimited or undefined hours.

Deputy Fagan told us that the towns and cities did not give any help to the farmers in the economic war. I do not think that is true; I think they had the townspeople at their backs in that struggle. Anything they could do, they did, and if the really poor benefited by having cheaper meat during that period, I do not think Deputy Fagan or anybody else should or would begrudge it to them. He will admit that in the days of the Land League the men of the towns were the backbone of the Land League organisation when the farmers were fighting landlordism and I do not think that he or anybody in rural Ireland should forget that. Finally, I ask the Minister to get in touch with the Agricultural Wages Board and try to secure that periodical inspections will be made by the inspectors of the board to ensure that the stipulated wages are paid to the agricultural workers.

It was rather amusing to listen to Deputy Fagan's opening remarks. He felt it necessary to chastise the Farmers' Party and once again Fine Gael feels it their duty to act the kindly father or godfather to this Party. They wanted to know what kind of a rut we were in. I would remind the Deputy that 20 per cent. of our Party has spoken, while only 12 per cent. of Fine Gael has as yet contributed to the debate. That is all I have to say so far as he is concerned.

The Minister, in moving the Estimate, stated, quite correctly, that the big problem before us is food production and that this problem overshadows every other aspect of agricultural policy. The need for increased production undoubtedly is very great, and it should scarcely be necessary for anybody to have to emphasise the fact. The Minister was down in our county not so long ago to inform the farmers there of the necessity for increased production. The Minister may not be aware that the farmers of the West have always, not only during the emergency but in peace time, cultivated a large area of their arable land, and in fact I could not see any necessity for any Minister to come down to Mayo to deal with food production. What we would need is a Minister to deal not with food production but with the division of land and the giving to the people of my area of the means whereby they could cultivate land and increase food production. You cannot get increased production on patches of bog and rock, and I am sure the Minister and his Government are aware of that.

Their failure to provide the farmers of the West of Ireland and their sons with the necessary land in the last ten or 12 years—and the land is there— is the cause of much of the agitation necessary now to force the farmers in the midlands who have too much land to respond. The difficulty which confronts the farmer in the midlands, in my opinion, is that he never realised he possessed too much land until this Compulsory Tillage Order came into force. It was so easy to forget about the amount of land he had so long as he had nothing to do but rear bullocks and sheep on it, but now that he has to take his coat off, or pay somebody else for taking his coat off and cultivating the land, he grumbles. There would be no necessity for that grumbling if the Government had taken the necessary action in the past 12 years and had placed the real farmers in the West of Ireland on the land, giving them economic holdings of 50 arable acres or so.

Nobody will suggest that it would be reasonable to allow the people to starve and therefore the Government is doing what I consider to be its duty in forcing the farmer who refuses to cultivate either to till or give up possession of his land. As a Deputy representing the smaller farmers, I am in full agreement with that. I fully agree that the Government should use whatever measures they feel are necessary to secure the required quota of tillage from the farmers, in the West, in the South, or in whatever other areas the Government thinks the best results can be achieved. The maximum agricultural production cannot be achieved, no matter how willing the farmers are, unless there are drastic changes in the agricultural system. By far too many of the farmers whom we are calling upon for more food are not in a position to respond. The total number of farms in this country is 382,000. How many farmers would we suggest have got holdings of 15 acres? About 22 farmers out of every 100 have got a holding of over 15 acres and when we consider that, it is very unreasonable to expect that these farmers will be able to produce the necessary food that we are clamouring for to-day. When you see the unequal distribution of land, how it is distributed, the smallness of the holding on the one hand and the larger size holding on the other—many of these, particularly in the west of Ireland, are as I have said before just bits of bog—how can a farmer endeavouring to live and rear a family on one of these holdings produce food for the nation? He could only use the most primitive means of cultivation and if he is lucky he will have enough for himself and for his family. He has no surplus for sale. He has no surplus that he can give towards the support of the people in the cities and the towns or those in the rural areas who do not live on the land.

The Government when calling for more food should realise that there are so many small holdings and so many small farmers who are forced to live on uneconomic patches of land and that a very special effort should be made to solve their problem. For instance, down in my county if a small farmer goes to the Land Commission to get some conacre to add to the little holding he has got in order to increase food production, he is charged an exorbitant price. The Minister is aware of that because I put a question down in the House on the subject, but I did not get a satisfactory reply.

The reply I got was that the Land Commission or the responsible caretaker or man who is looking after the interests of the commission only charges sufficient to defray the expenses of that particular holding. That is wrong. I know for a fact that they are charged anything from £4 to £5, and in some cases £6. I hold that is too much and far in excess of what it takes to defray the expenses of that holding, where you have holdings from 50 to 90 or 100 acres. Then it is a known fact that there are in County Mayo lands that have been under the commission for as much as five years and no steps have been taken to divide them. Yet we hear these passionate appeals from the Minister or the Government to the farmers to increase food production rather than allow the people to starve.

One change must be made if production is to be increased and if the lot of the farmers is to be improved: unnecessary profits arising in the course of distribution must be avoided. Now that is a point I am interested in because a lot of people in this House have been making out that the farmer is well off, due to the fact that the prices for commodities, such as butter or eggs or milk, in the market or in the greengrocers' shops in Dublin have increased. But it is the middle man who is having the profit instead of the farmer. At present, in the case of most agricultural produce, the farmer only gets a fraction of the retail prices which the consumer has to pay. The price which the farmer gets for his produce bears no relation to the price paid by the man or woman in the town. Between the farmer and the consumer there is a whole range of middle men who extract a reasonable profit, but in some cases an excessive profit, while the farmer, who should be getting a reasonable part of that profit, does not get it at all. The idea is held by people in the towns, by the workers in the City of Dublin and Cork that, because of these prices, the farmer is having a good time but it is not the farmer, it is the middle man.

Take even the farmers' produce that requires no process of manufacture after he has sold it to the retailers. Take milk or fruit or such commodities in respect of which there has to be no manufacture or no alteration effected after he has sold it. What percentage does he get of the retail prices of those commodities? From my knowledge something from 30 to 40 per cent. The difference between the price the farmer gets and that which the consumer has to pay is outrageous and must be reduced. The increased price paid for the farmer's produce since the emergency has been going largely to the middle man, the manufacturers, and so on, who exploit the farmer and stand between him and the consumer. I would ask the Minister if he thinks anything could be done to remedy that. It is unfair what has been said in this House— I have heard it said here—that the farmer is well off to-day, that he is better off than he has ever been since the 1914-1918 war. The farmer knows himself that he is not better off to-day, because although we may be getting a better price for our produce, and may be getting a better price for our cattle and for our butter, what are we paying for the things we have got to purchase? Look what we have to pay for shoes and clothes and for implements to cultivate the soil—ploughs, etc. To shoe a horse to-day costs £1. Has the Minister taken these things into consideration? Have the members who stand up here and say the farmers are well off taken these things into consideration? It costs £1 to put shoes on a pony and another £1 to have a plough repaired by a blacksmith or to have a coulter or a sock put on it. That costs money. All these things have to be repaired, but the Government does not seem to take that into consideration. Although there may be a little increase over the pre-war prices, it is coming out of their pockets again in the extra costs they have to pay for materials.

I put a question down here not very long ago about the price of beet and I asked the Minister for Finance if he would consider reducing the sugar content. He told me, I think, that he had nothing to do with the company as it was a public company and that even if he could intervene to reduce the sugar content it would mean a worsening of the financial position of the sugar company. Yet I find that the sugar company in 1942 made £99,427 3s. 2d. profit and in 1943, £23,382 5s. 5d. profit after they had paid corporation tax, every other tax and expenses that had to be paid. I also find that they are paying 6 per cent. interest to their preference shareholders. Yet when the farmers' representatives asked the Minister this request it is turned down although he knows, and every man conversant with farming knows, that there are very few farmers growing beet who reach the 17½ per cent. sugar content. It is like telling a hungry man that there is a good dinner waiting for him in Australia when you tell the farmer you will give him £4 a ton for his beet if it contains a sugar content of 17½ per cent. I ask the Minister to reduce the percentage to 15½. That was the percentage required, I think, away back in 1934. The price then was low: it was only 35/-, I think, but 35/- then was as good as £4 to-day. The percentage was only 15½ then. Why raise it to 17½? Why, on the one hand, offer the farmer a reasonable price and then put an obstacle in the way so that he cannot get that £4 per ton? If the Minister wants the farmers to respond he will have to treat them reasonably.

You can hardly talk about Ireland without mentioning agriculture. We could not exist without agriculture, which is our main industry. In fact, it is the industry. Although there are other important industries, when compared with agriculture all other industries fade away into insignificance. I am not minimising the importance of other industries which are playing a great part in helping us in this emergency by the manufacture of clothes, footwear and other necessaries. But, in comparison with agriculture, they fade away.

We could manage without them, but we could not exist without agriculture. We would die if we had not food. Whatever remedy we might adopt to make up for the shortage of clothes and footwear, we could not do without food. When agriculture is of such importance, why are agricultural wages so low? Some men employed in the beet factories and other industries can get as much as £6 per week. The sugar cooks in the beet factories went on strike last summer for more than £6. I do not say they were not entitled to that. I am a member of a trade union —the Amalgamated Woodworkers' Society—and I believe in being in a trade union. But I cannot understand why people employed in industries which are not so important as agriculture can get from £3 10s. to £6 10s. per week, while the agricultural worker gets a niggardly sum which is not sufficient to maintain him. He gets something over £2 per week. What good is that when it would take nearly two weeks' wages to buy a pair of boots? The agricultural worker is not properly treated. That is why young men to-day do not want to work on the land. Can you blame them? I would not ask a man to work on the land for that wage, because I would not ask him to do anything I would not do myself. These men have to work from early morning until late hours at night at harvest and other times for a miserable couple of pounds per week. I think it was Deputy Fagan said that they offered 15/- and 16/- per day to agricultural workers in Meath. I doubt that very much. I am not here to represent the large farmer, or the rancher, although it has been often said that I would not be in these benches 24 hours if I was forced by any Party to support the rancher or the large farmer. I am here to represent the farmer with about 50 acres. I know the wages the large farmer is prepared to offer and what he would like to do with his workers. The Minister knows it as well as I know it, or perhaps better, but he is not prepared to take steps to see that the agricultural worker gets a decent wage. On the other hand, the agricultural worker cannot be paid a decent wage if the farmer is not paid a fair price for his produce. That is where the crux comes in.

The farmer must be paid a fair price for his produce. Instead of a big percentage of the price of agricultural produce going to the middle man or the retailer, it should go to the farmer, and then the farmer could pay his labourer a reasonable or decent wage so that he could procure some of the comforts which other classes of workers enjoy owing to the fact that they are getting better wages. It may be argued that the agricultural worker has certain privileges, that he gets free milk or perhaps a little butter or something like that. I know many of them who get nothing but insults. They have to try to maintain a wife and family on the miserable sum I mention. I do not know how they manage to exist. It is merely a hand-to-mouth sort of existence. These men have to try to keep body and soul together on that miserable sum at a time like this.

We are told that there are from £90,000,000 to £100,000,000 lying in the banks. I do not see why some of that money should not be availed of. If large farmers who should employ labour can put up the case that they have no capital, I do not see why the Government could not lend them some of this money which is lying idle in the banks at 1½ or 2 per cent. interest, which would cover what the banks have to pay to those who keep their money in the banks. In that way we would have an increase in food production and the Government could see to it that better wages are paid to those who work on the land. In that way more young men will be prepared to remain on the land and make the land a means of livelihood. How is it that young men from my county will not go to the midlands to work as agricultural labourers? If you do not want a black eye you had better not ask one of them to do that. He would scoff at the idea, as he can go across to England and within a few months come home with 100 English pound notes to help to maintain his mother and father and other members of the family during the winter period. If he goes to the midlands, he will not get sufficient to maintain himself. These young men can get anything from £7 to £10 per week in England pulling beet and picking potatoes. I should like to ask the Minister how it is that they can get that pay in England and not get a living wage here.

There has been a lot said about agriculture. I have listened to some Fianna Fáil Deputies who have made a rather determined attack on the Government. I listened to Deputy Childers stating that £100,000,000 would be necessary to put agriculture on a sound footing. That does not speak very well for the Fianna Fáil policy after ten or 12 years of its operation. The Deputy estimates that £100,000,000 should be necessary to put agriculture on a sound footing. It is necessary to put agriculture on a sound footing. We have now got a golden opportunity to do that, an opportunity that we could hardly have visualised in pre-war days would ever be presented to this country. Our great opponents in the world market were Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Holland. To-day, those countries are in a sense off the map in so far as supplying our principal market is concerned—the market which the Fianna Fáil Party whipped so often but which is still alive. Seeing that those competitors are now off the market—competitors whom we would have found it very hard to outdo at the rate we were going—we should take every step to see that when they come back after the war they will not be in the same position. It would be a crying shame if they come back after the war and put us again at the back of the class where we were in 1939.

God in His mercy preserved us from the horrors of this war. I do not think that was done by the Fianna Fáil Party or any other Party. God in His mercy preserved us from the horrors of this war, and if we only use our heads now we should be in a position to supply Britain with the commodities she requires when this war is over. We should see to it now that our agricultural system is put on a sound footing, so that when the war is over our produce will be able to compete with that from any other part of the world. Our egg industry, for instance, would then be able to hold its own against Denmark. Deputy Childers referred to the cheese industry, which is a very important branch of our agriculture, and should be developed. Every branch of our agricultural industry should be so developed that we will be able to supply Great Britain and any other country which is in need of our produce when the war is over. Other countries in Europe which have been ravaged by this terrible war will require food as badly as Great Britain, and we should try to be in a position to supply not only our principal market but any other market which calls upon us to deliver the goods.

In the Estimates, we see a reference to the Consultative Council, and I should like to know from the Minister who makes up that council? Where has he drawn his men from? Are they all from the Fianna Fáil Party or has he taken them from the other sides of the House? Are there any farmers on that council, and, if so, who are they? Has he taken any members from the Labour Benches, and, if so, who are they? Has he taken any members from the Fine Gael Benches? No matter what we may say, there is intelligence on every side of the House. There are men on every side of the House who can make useful suggestions as to the best post-war policy, and their intelligence should be used. The Government should not take everything into their own hands, particularly when they are a minority Government, no longer representing the country. They should have on that council men from all sides of the House, men with practical farming experience who would be able to advise the Minister as to our best post-war policy. On the Vote on Account, one Deputy on the Government Benches tried to discredit the Farmers' Party because——

The Deputy may not reply now to something said on the Vote on Account. There is sufficient material for discussion in this Estimate and three related motions.

I am sorry. The fact that we may not have criticised the increase in taxation does not at all suggest that we are in agreement with it. We feel that taxation is all right provided that what is taken from the people in equally distributed, and that the people derive reasonable benefit from it. We as farmers are never opposed to paying an extra penny on tobacco or an extra penny on sugar or any other commodity, provided that those pennies, amounting to millions, are spent on the workers, and that the people generally benefit from that taxation. We grumble only when that taxation is not spent in the interests of the community.

The Minister for Agriculture is not Minister for Finance.

I understand that, but I wanted to make that little point clear.

Then the case is worse than I thought. The irrelevance was deliberate.

I do not think there is much more to be said, except to mention that in this emergency we are at one with the Government, and I think the same can be said of every Party in this House. But the Government should not go outside this House riding on their high horse and claiming that they and they only are steering the country through this emergency. They are no more entitled to claim that than any other Party.

That does not arise. This is an Estimate for Agriculture. I suppose the Deputy is again deliberately trying to get in those remarks, knowing he is not entitled to do so, as he said a minute ago.

In so far as increasing our tillage and providing the necessary food for the nation is concerned, the farmers on these benches are solidly behind the Government. They would be equally solidly behind any other Government, and I think the same can be said for every Party in this House. In regard to anything which is for the benefit of the country in times like these I think the Government has no need to appeal for support to the various Parties in the House; that support is voluntarily forthcoming. All we want from the Government is a sound policy and a sympathetic understanding of the needs of the people; they should not ask too much from the farmers unless they are prepared to give a little in return.

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney rose.

The Deputy might move to report progress.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again to-morrow.
The Dáil adjourned at 9 p.m. until 3 p.m. Thursday, 23rd March.
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