In thrusting myself into the discussion at this late point, on the sixth day we have spent on the agricultural Estimates, I find myself affected with a greater reluctance to debate than usual. That is due not merely to the fact that I am town born and town and city bred and that in so far as I can claim any acquaintance with agriculture at any time of my life it is only at one or two removes from those who are directly associated with it. There is also the fact that I sit for a city constituency and to the superficial eye it might seem that neither I nor my constituents have anything to do with this matter of agriculture and how it is likely to fare in the future.
I am also affected by this fact that, after so many days spent in this debate, and so many speakers having spoken on it, and so many topics having been opened, I find it impossible, with the limited means at my disposal, to correlate quite a number of the suggestions and ideas that have been shot out here. But although it may seem arrogance on my part, I find it a source of complaint that not one of the many specialists whom we have heard on the matter thought fit to do what seemed to me to be a simple matter, namely, to get the details of these agricultural Estimates, see what the expenditure of the moneys made for, try to tie these together, to knit them up into some sort of agricultural policy, and tell us what that agricultural policy was, how it had worked in the past, how it was likely to work in the future, and tell us then what the country, which depends upon this main, basic industry, has to look to. Nobody has done that so far as I have either heard in this House, or read. I may seem arrogant in saying that should have been done, and if I make some attempt to do it myself, I hope people will not take it as arrogance on my part. I do say I cast an inexperienced eye on the situation but it is one that is definitely interested and it is one that is definitely sympathetic because I know definitely that, not merely my own fate and my children's fate but that of my constituents depend upon how far agriculture thrives and prospers in this country.
I say I am a city man. As far as agriculture is concerned, in these times of emergency, I do not think that we really have much to compliment the Minister for Agriculture or his Department on. Compliments have been paid to the farmers, and they are well-deserved, but as far as we in the city are concerned, as far as we town-folks are concerned, it is not what the farmer grows, in the main, that is of importance to us, but how far that Minister and other Ministers get a very small fraction of what the farmer grows into this city. I do not know what the statistics are.
I have heard them questioned up and down. Possibly the Minister will correct me here and now, but I understand it is only a very small fraction indeed, say, of the oat crop of this country which is needed for human requirements, something in the region of, possibly, as low as 5 per cent, certainly not higher than 10 per cent. When one thinks of all the potatoes grown in this country and tries to relate these to human needs, not of the City of Dublin alone, but human needs all over the country, again it is a small fraction relatively of the whole crop that is required for human needs, and it is only that small fraction of either oats, potatoes or anything else that we in the city are troubled about. When we think of the messes that there were in regard to even the sale of the small percentage of the entire oat crop of this country that was required in Dublin, when we know that there was at least a certain amount of panic with regard to the situation in respect of potatoes, and when we who had gone through that panic lived to hear that more than enough potatoes to have completely quelled all thought of panic had been left to rot in the fields, then we begin to get some idea of what the organisation at the back of the Government is. That is as far as the city man is affected immediately in these emergency circumstances by agriculture.
I have to ask myself with regard to this whole matter, is it right in the circumstances that prevail and is it likely to be right in the future that agriculture is and will be our foundation industry? It is so at the moment. It has been so in the past. It is from an agricultural community that we have piled up all these vast credits, these external assets that are held out to us as such glittering prizes, to be cashed in on sometime in the future. Everybody who has written on this subject in recent years has said that agriculture has been, is, and must for years to come be considered as the main industry of this country. I take a quotation from what has come to be regarded as the Bible of the present Government — the Banking Commission Report. In that quotation this extract occurs:—
"The Free State is predominantly an agricultural country, which means not only that the greatest portion of the population gains its livelihood in agriculture, but that the main exports required to pay for necessary imports are obtained from agriculture... Access to profitable export markets for agricultural products will in the future as in the past govern the prosperity and welfare of the main body of the Irish people."
Some parts of the quotation are left out, but this extract continues:—
"From the point of view of the balance of payments the home manufacturer of many industrial products will to some extent reduce the need of imports; but as regards raw materials and a whole series of semi-manufactured and finished articles imports will still be necessary to maintain the standard of living within the country. Experience in other countries has shown that an increase in the standard of living involves increased imports, and there is no reason to believe that it could be otherwise in the Free State."
And then this significant part follows:—
"So far as exports are concerned there is very little evidence of any export of products from the new industries which have been established, and there has, in fact, during recent years been a marked decrease in the export volume of the older industries other than brewing. The tendency has thus been to make agriculture increasingly responsible for the maintenance of sufficient exports."
That appears on page 116 of the Banking Commission Report. The writer of an article who quotes that, then sums up:—
"The report, therefore, conceives the position of agriculture as fundamental in regard to the balance of payments, the monetary position and the possibility of economic and social development."
Let us take that as agreed.
Agriculture has been our main industry. On it we have lived; on it we have piled up those external assets. It is so at the moment, and even if, painfully and at great cost to the consumer, certain industries have been fostered in recent years, there is not merely no great possibility of exports from those industries but there has been a decline in the exports of the old industries, other than agriculture. We can take it that agriculture means a livelihood, wealth, good social and economic conditions for the whole of us. If agriculture thrives, we in the city thrive; if agriculture dies, we decay.
This country has been marked by two great characteristics. One has been emigration. The other, to adopt this modern terminology with regard to other things, has been the flight from marriage or the flight from parenthood. Emigration was the old drain on this country. The habit of emigrating to America was one which had been founded many years ago. At the time of the Famine, it was a flight from poverty, and the only country that held out any hope to those whom we could not keep at home in any sort of decent employment was the United States. Then the conditions changed. America got into her depression, and this country offered, relatively at least, a better condition of things than ever the great United States of America offered. For certain years prior to 1932, emigration had been on a very definite decline, with the result that in about 1931 and 1932, for the first time since the Famine, this country showed more people returning to it than those who were leaving. Then we had the Fianna Fáil Government, and then we had the economic war.
Both those things set the tendency back in the old direction, and with the present war we have got to the point where, on an average, 30,000 people leave our country every year, no longer to go to the United States of America, but to England. Apart from that, a marked characteristic of this country has been what I call the situation with regard to marriage. Our record with regard to that matter is unenviable. Eighty-eight per cent. of the men under 30 years of age and 66 per cent. of the women under 30 years of age in rural Ireland are unmarried. The number of marriages contracted in this country is decreasing, and the age at which marriages are contracted is increasing. There are less marriages, and those which are contracted take place at a later age. One result of that, shown in the 1936 census of population, was that there were 78,000 less children in this country about 1939 than there had been ten years earlier — 78,000 less children in a population of about 3,000,000. We have emigration now on a rising scale.
In over 20 years or so of native government we have had no betterment in the conditions with regard to marriage and the production of children. The number of children is decreasing, the menfolk and the womenfolk of this country are not marrying, large numbers are emigrating, and, co-incident with all that, we have achieved a position which economists will describe in enthusiastic terms, the position of being, relative to our size, one of the greatest creditor nations in the world. Money galore is made here and sent out of the country. Now, with it we are sending our emigrants. The situation is that the aged people and the ageing people are becoming a dangerous proportion of the population of the country, and those who are young and growing up to manhood are becoming a dangerously low proportion.
How is the situation that we are in brought about by those conditions under which agriculture is our basic industry and must be regarded as in some way the cause? How is that going to fare in the future? What approach is this country making towards achieving what is normally the ideal position, the position in which a man's income, the family income, the wages that people are able to earn in gainful occupation will be sufficient to give them all they need and to enable them to make provision against the accidents of life, sickness, unemployment and other things? How far is agriculture leading us along a path which will lead us to a condition where we will be able to do away with social services? Social services may be blessed in one breath, but, looked at from a particular angle, social services have a pauperising influence. The more people go in for social services the greater the condemnation is it of the social system under which they live. What is the approach we have to that ideal position? What are we going to do with regard to the future?
One of the things, I think, that caused harmony to hover around this debate, is that we know we are living in a rather fluctuating situation. Nobody is very clear as to when the present war is going to end. Some people do not even appear to be clear about how it will end, and certainly most of us are in the dark as to what conditions will supervene once the war is over. But there is one thing we can count as clear, and that is that the present Government, through some of their Ministers, seem to know definitely who is going to win the war, and that is England and her allies. There is no doubt that the Ministry are developing whatever they can call a policy along the lines that, in this present war, England is certain to win. That has nothing to do with our neutrality. It is simply an estimate, the bringing to bear of judgment upon certain facts that are before our eyes, and coming to certain conclusions. There is no doubt that the Ministry have made up their minds that England is going to win. We are backing England to win, backing her with far higher stakes than any man has ever gambled, and I certainly think, in this war, with far higher stakes than any other nation gambles.
The Minister for Industry and Commerce went to University College, Dublin, recently and told us that, granted certain conditions, there was going to be no isolationist policy for Eire. Of course, he had to put a little bit of a tag at the end to suit the groundlings; he had to say that, if this country remained in a mutilated condition, we might have to live in a condition of isolation, but, if we could forget that, or if that was mended for us, then we had to see ourselves entering into trade relations with the rest of the world. I pass by that nonsense about cutting off our economic nose to spite our partitioned face. The Minister does not even believe what he says. The Minister did say that, at the moment, we are trading exclusively with England; he asked for appreciation of this fact, that we are sending over to England at least twice as much as we are getting back from her, and he said we were heaping up a vast accumulation of sterling assets which he described as properly to be regarded as cash after the war is over. It is a two to one bet apparently. We are sending out twice as much as we are getting back, and we are going to leave the remainder there to accumulate for our use after the war.
Clearly, we must regard it as certain that England is going to win. Not merely must we regard that as certain but we must regard it as certain that she will not be bankrupted in so winning. There would not be much good in our piling up these reserves if England were simply going to scramble through the war and not be able to meet her commitments after the war. Not merely, according to the speech of the Minister, will these reserves be available but we shall be able to call on them as and when we please when the war is over. They are what he calls cash. England is going to be able and willing to pay as and when we want the payments made. I have not yet heard any English economist speak about the future as the Minister spoke at the University that night. He based his policy on that. We have based our whole attitude in relation to this war, or very nearly, on this belief which is the basis of the Minister's argument. I say "very nearly" for this reason. In the course of that speech which was delivered in University College on the 7th of this month the Minister went on to say that the surplus we were exporting "was determined not so much on our people's capacity or willingness to eat more meat and eggs as by their difficulty in purchasing more of these products at prevailing prices."
In other words, we are doing a great trade with Britain. We are sending her twice as much as we are getting from her, but we are not doing that really freely. We are doing it because we have so much of a surplus; it is not really a surplus; it is only a surplus, because owing to prevailing prices our community at home will not buy the meat, the eggs and the other things going out. That is a sad commentary on what that same Minister used to tell us years before, that if we had great industrial production here, the home market for the farmer would be marvellously improved. Time rolled on and disproved these prophecies. We had the same Minister telling us in 1934 that the British markets would never again be available to free and unrestricted entry of agricultural produce and that the worst service anybody could perform to the farmer was to mislead him into the belief that that would be the situation ever again.
I find in other publications the statement that, of course, industry in this country cannot thrive unless agriculture thrives because agriculture employs one-half of the population, and if they are maintained at such a low rate that they have very little purchasing power, they have not the wherewithal to buy the industrial goods produced here. So we have this fearful dilemma. Agriculture cannot get a good home market because the industrial worker has not money enough to buy as much as he wishes of our agricultural products, and we must export them even though our people are hungry. The agriculturist, on the other hand, cannot buy the products of industry because he is so badly paid and his purchasing power is at a very low ebb. While that is going on, and while one party lacks the purchasing power to buy the commodities that the other is producing, we still continue exporting our surplus produce and piling up sterling assets. These amounted to £300,000,000 before the war and year by year since we are adding to these external assets because the agriculturist has not the purchasing power to buy the products of the industrialist and the industrialist has not been able to supply a home market for agricultural products. So we must export to Britain not because we really think it is good trade, but because the people at home cannot buy the produce here at the prevailing prices.
Somebody else talked in this debate about self-sufficiency. I thought at least that that cry would have gone for ever, tested by the hard experience of these last few years. I remember one occasion when the Taoiseach was Leader of the Opposition and when he was in a very imaginative mood. He contemplated the happy community we should have here if somebody would build an insurmountable wall around the country. He pictured the country as a hive of industry in which everybody was running around trying to manufacture something for everybody else's needs. We have very nearly, though not quite, got that insurmountable wall round the country which the Taoiseach desired and we know what has happened. We have been subjected to a succession of rises in prices. We have been subjected to control of a type that no ordinary person would stand in times of peace. We have been subjected to the manufacture of new crimes every day, breaches of Orders, etc., and notwithstanding all that, we know that our standard of living has sunk appreciably since that ideal situation was brought about.
I often ask myself would people now be in a more reasonable mood to consider a matter that has been agitating a few speakers in this debate. We went in for a wheat policy here, and I have to laugh when I hear it stated that it has been the salvation of this country. One of the slogans very widely used during the last election was: "Where would we be if we had not a wheat policy in the country?" Supposing we had it all over again. Supposing we were back again in the days of 1936 and 1937 and that we had definite information that the war was going to start in 1939. Would we have gone in for the intensive cultivation of wheat in this country since 1936 onwards? I suggest we would not. At least I suggest there would have been a better policy — to keep the land fertile, to store cereals and fertilisers. Then we would have been in a much better position to face the impact of the war than we were after this programme was carried out.
One time in my life I had a post in the City of Cork, and in the "digs" in which I was living there was an old man who was living on some remittance. He was very ancient. He used to make his appearance about 12 o'clock in the day, when the sun was high in the heavens and the streets were well aired, and he went to bed about 8 o'clock. In that way he carried on a modest type of life. All he had to know was that ahead of him, at a particular period of the year, there was a supervisory post which entailed for three days a vigilation in a certain supervisory way from 8 o'clock in the morning until 8 o'clock at night. He decided that he would practice getting up early, and for a week before the day I watched that poor man being roused, stumbling down at the unaccustomed hour of 8 o'clock in the morning, getting his food at hours that did not suit him, and sitting up to an hour that was not healthy for him. He did that for a whole week before the duties of the supervisory position came to be discharged. When the day at last arrived, we could hardly get him out of bed, and he was carried back in an almost helpless condition, half-way through the day on which he had begun the duties.
I often think about that old man in connection with our wheat policy in this country. We went in for practising something years ahead of the war that was going to run out the fertility of the land. We took in considerable stores, but although it was put to the Minister in the year before, we made no provision by way of storing fertilisers. We did nothing that any provident Government would have done. Yet, at this moment, there are people who will ask: "Where would you be if it were not for the wheat policy?" I have seen that question discussed in the publications of other countries. In one of these articles, not dealing particularly with wheat, it is stated: "Of course, self-sufficiency can be achieved in any country, even with food, but self-sufficiency can be an extremely expensive way of securing life." A comparison is then made to show the amount of the expense. I should like to relate that to home conditions.
In the days before the war, the calculation generally accepted in this House was one which set out that, if we imported wheat at the rates then obtaining, instead of paying for the wheat produced at home, we could have saved a round £1,000,000. Suppose we had saved that £1,000,000 and that we had carried out the policy of saving that £1,000,000 for 20 years. Think of the capital fund that could be serviced out of that £1,000,000 over 20 years. Suppose we had £1,000,000 with which to pay sinking fund and interest in respect of some accumulated debt for a capital purpose. We are anxious to have a mercantile marine. The calculation has been made in England that, if she had gone in for expensive self-sufficiency in food, she would have lost an amount of money equal to the cost of building the entire British Navy and British mercantile marine and maintaining both. Out of the £1,000,000 we could have saved in this way, we could have our own mercantile marine. We could have built that mercantile marine at home, keeping the money at home. We could have given some new employment to citizens and we would have the ships which are now, apparently, so vital to our life.
Self-sufficiency is, apparently, still being thought of by members of the Fianna Fáil Party. If it is, do they ever stop to ponder this question: We are piling up what the Minister for Supplies calls "our claims upon future production in England." The English have told us in pamphlets, lectures and speeches by Ministers that the only way they can hope to pay is: (1) by a funding process, spreading the debt over a number of years, and (2) payment only in goods, which means sending us more goods than they will take from us. So the policy to which we are paying lip-service — self-sufficiency — is one which necessitates a very big surplus importation of goods, a greater importation than exportation of goods in the years after the war. How that is to be squared with a pure self-sufficiency policy, I do not know. These are the realities, not speeches. The Minister takes credit for that and says that what we have done in that respect has not been sufficiently appreciated.
Suppose the Ministerial viewpoint is borne out and Britain does win this war. Suppose that not merely does she win it but that she wins it without going bankrupt. Her people will be coming home from the armed forces at the conclusion of the war. We all expect that, at least for an interval, there will be considerable activity in England. New machinery will be required. Men will have to be fed; needs will have to be catered for. We know that, so far as the British Government and so far as most British political Parties are concerned, they are agreed upon a policy of expansion. Suppose they succeed in achieving this policy of expansion. At present, we are losing about 30,000 of our people yearly. What are we doing here with a view to achieving, in the period after the war, such a situation at home as will tempt extra 30,000's to stay at home instead of going abroad? We know that the British standard of wages, in comparison with the cost of living, is higher than ours. We know that the British standards of social services are higher at present and that they promise to be higher in future. Any time a question is put in this House as to why people are allowed to go abroad in these times, it is always met by the answer from the Ministerial Benches: "There is only one way to stop them and that is by the use of methods only native to totalitarian countries, and will anybody here stand for the application of such forcible methods to our people?" Will the same answer hold in peace-time? If, after this war, we are faced with a comparison very much to our detriment as between standard rates of pay and opportunities for work, how are we to stop these 30,000 persons multiplying into a much higher figure? Will the answer still be a good one —that you can only do it by force and, of course, a native Government would shrink from the use of force against people leaving the country? Nobody could ask that people for whom we have nothing but the dole should be forcibly kept here if opportunities for life and livelihood beyond their imaginings offer on the other side. But if that is the situation, where are we? Is our marriage rate to go still lower? Is our marriage age to go still higher? Are we to find ourselves more and more an ageing community, with fewer and fewer children, and are we to see more than ever before of our adult population go from us to England? In that connection, putting these queries, I ask what is the policy with regard to agriculture, how has the Minister used the moneys with which we have provided him; has he added them into something that could be described as a policy and what are its prospects?
I bring myself back now, with a certain amount of gloom, to a speech I have three times quoted in this House, a speech made by the Minister for Agriculture in Cork in December, 1941. I thought that that speech might be dated for the time at which it was delivered. That speech was followed by a speech by the Minister for Local Government which furnished an equally gloomy picture of one other side of agriculture — the live-stock trade. I thought that this speech in 1941 might be only dated for that particular period, that a better view might prevail and that some better idea of a constructive and hopeful policy might be substituted. But I find that, towards the end of last year, the Minister for Local Government definitely repeated the same thoughts and gave support to very much the same policy. I have the quotations before me but the House knows them already. They are enshrined in the records of the House. The Minister, addressing his Cork audience told them —so far as I remember, they were a group of agricultural students — that we had set out on a policy of division of land and that there was no going back on that — that we were out for the small farm. The Minister added that his view was that the small farm meant increased production costs for whatever was raised on the small farm. Now, there are other views on that, but that is the Minister's view: that we were out for the small farm but that, so far as the small farm was concerned, it was going to mean increased costs in relation to our production. In the same breath, the Minister said that it was extremely doubtful that they would get, after the war, anything like present prices for exported live stock. In the same breath, the Minister also said that we must find a market for the exportable surplus of our agricultural production. There is the picture that is presented to us. We are presented with a picture of the small farm, which would entail higher costs of production. We are told that we should go back to that, while at the same time we are told that we must be prepared to face the competition of the other countries in the post-war period; but the small farm, according to the Minister, involves increased costs of production. Yet we are told that we must have an increased exportable surplus of goods.
How is that to be done? Does the Minister propose to do it, or how does he propose to do it? In that gloomy frame of mind in which he was at that particular period, he said that we would have to look forward to the virtual elimination of the export of dairy produce, and that if such a course should eventually become necessary, it would not be so disastrous to farming economy as might, at first sight, be feared. He said that if, on the other hand, we decided after the war to continue in the export business, we could only do so by reducing the standard of living of our agriculturists or by reducing costs of production. He went on further to say, referring to the pig industry, that if it became necessary to subsidise the export of bacon, or pig products generally, by making the home consumer pay more for his rasher, the obvious thing to do would be to reduce pig stocks to about their present number, which was only sufficient to supply the wants of our own consumers. The Minister for Industry and Commerce, some months later, however, said that it was extremely difficult if, after the war, we would get anything like present prices for exported live stock, and that this might mean the virtual extermination of the industry.
I have said, speaking as a city man, that everything in this country depends on the export of our agricultural produce. If dairy products are to be eliminated after the war: if the pig, and the products derived from the pig, are to be eliminated after this war, and if the live-stock industry generally is to be eliminated after the war — if, in other words, we are to look towards the virtual extermination of these industries, where are we? The Minister was not content, however, to express those viewpoints generally. He went into some detail. He said, referring to the competition that we are up against from New Zealand:—
"Situated as we are, a country of small farmers with a long winter during which our cows must be housed and fed, we cannot compete on equal terms with the Antipodes. The question is often asked why our farmers cannot compete with New Zealand in the production of butter. Before the war we were both on the British market, and it may appear strange that New Zealand, so far away, could increase her exports and, evidently, build up a profitable business, while our exports declined, even though we helped producers through an export bounty."
Now, this is what the Minister gave as a part explanation of that situation:—
"The farms are bigger in New Zealand and can be more easily mechanised than ours. They have practically no winter to provide for. Their milk yields, per cow, are higher. They can, therefore, produce a much larger volume per person engaged in agriculture than our farmers can here."
Having given these considerations as the fundamentals of the position, the Minister went on to examine the matter and said that we cannot change our climate; that we are not in the same position as New Zealand, and that if, after the war, we decide to continue the export business, we can only do so by reducing the standard of living of our agriculturists or by reducing costs of production. He said, in effect, that we can only reach the New Zealand output per person by undoing the work of the Land Commission over the last 20 or 30 years — by clearing the small holdings and re-creating the larger ranches. In fact, as the Minister told us, we might be compelled to discontinue those exports, and he said that the elimination of the export of dairy products, if such a course should eventually become necessary, would not be so disastrous to farming economy as might at first sight be feared: that the question would obviously have to be examined very carefully, and the object achieved by deliberate and careful planning.
He then went on to speak about his fears in regard to the pig industry, and said that the second line that might have to be reviewed was bacon. The Minister illuminated the case with regard to pigs and pig products in that speech, which was made in December, 1941; but in November, 1943, the Minister for Local Government and Public Health, at a dinner given by the Irish Branch of the Town Planning Institute in Dublin, injected this dose of pessimism into town planning by saying:—
"We found to-day that the least fertile areas of the country carried the densest populations. How were we going to deal with that? We were an agricultural community, depending on selling our exportable surplus in a market in which, so far as could be foreseen, competition would be more intensified in the future.
Therefore, if we wanted to maintain our present standard of life we would have to make our agriculture more efficient, more highly mechanised, to apply to our soil — our natural resources — the most modern or most efficient machinery.
That almost essentially involved large farms. It would mean that we would have fewer farmers and workers. It might also mean that we should have — though not necessarily —larger urban communities, perhaps highly industrialised.
It would mean taking people off the land.
Our alternative to that was to say that we wanted small farms and more farmers, less machinery and more farm labourers. The choice had, however, been made and he did not want anyone to assume that the question was an open one. The people were the only body who could make this choice between the large and small farms.
That choice, he repeated, had already been made and the fact that we had to-day the Land Commission —and that it was likely to remain for another generation — indicated that the choice had been made."
I think it has been made quite clear that the small farm does not necessarily mean either lesser or larger production: that it does not necessarily follow; but the Ministerial view, apparently, is that the small farm means higher costs of production, and yet we are going to put the production of these small farms in competition with the production of larger farms in other countries. On the matter of how we are going to increase production, in view of the competition with which we will be faced, none of the Ministers has enlightened us. Will the Minister for Agriculture do so to-night? That is what has particularly concerned me with regard to our agricultural policy. In that connection, I might say, coincidentally, that the Minister for Industry and Commerce recently mentioned that it might be necessary to sacrifice certain things in order to preserve our social services.
It would appear, therefore, that that is the Ministerial policy. It would appear that there is a clear-cut view, amongst those who form the Government at the moment, that they have abandoned the policy of trading with other countries, and with England in particular. Certainly, they evidently realise, with clarity, that New Zealand has increased her production and is getting bigger yields from farming than we were getting before the war. That means that there will be more competition against us when the war is over, and I think that the Government must realise that the Argentine and Canada are going to be greater competitors, so far as we are concerned, than they were before the war, in the supply of agricultural products to the British markets. Yet, realising that, the members of the Government Party in this House have not yet indicated by a single sentence in this House, or by speeches in the House or outside it, how they are going to reconcile these two, apparently irreconcilable, points. As against that, of course, there are other people who have spoken and written to the effect that that is such a despairing policy that nobody could follow it. Undoubtedly, if that were to be the policy of the Government, we would have to say that it is a policy of despair and that it can only lead to decay. Nobody could speak otherwise, if that were to be the policy of the Department of Agriculture, but I find, in other Ministerial statements, some statements that do give ground for hope and that, I think, do seem to take cognisance of realities. It would seem from the statements of the Ministers I have in mind, that they put to themselves the question: How will the farming community emerge when this war is over; how will the capital value of their farms be in relation to what it was in the year 1938, before the war started, and how will they be situated in regard to the possession of their farms or lands? Will their lands have any capital value, or will they be exhausted or run out of fertility to such an extent as will take many years to repair?
What about farm machinery or agricultural implements of all types? Is the farmer to be in the position, when this war ends, that he will have to face the future, if he has one, and to give the exportable surplus of goods which the rest of the country requires he should give, if we are to achieve any standard of living in the whole community?
It is said that the farmers are making some money at the moment. Deputy Sheldon last night said that that might be—I think he said that he himself was—but when he looked at whatever little credit he had, whatever little balance he had on the credit side, and compared it with the loss he had in respect of one item only —I think he mentioned loss of fertility in the soil—he found himself not to any great extent better off than he was in 1938. Suppose Deputy Sheldon represents the community and that, even although the farmer may be getting some small credit, some little balance on the credit side, although most farmers would not agree that that is so, will what they have in hand help to replace their wasted assets in the last four or five years, to say nothing of the waste which occurred in their assets during the period of the economic war? Certainly nobody can say that the farmers are in the position in which town industry and town business have been left. I need not go into the figures which I have so often given to the Dáil, but nobody can say that the agricultural community as a whole have been given the leave that town manufacturing industry has been given in regard to the piling up of reserves, but if there is any reserve in the farmers when this war is over, it will be just barely sufficient to put them more or less in the productive position in which they were in 1939.
What then is to be done? That is where I, as a townsman, must yield to specialists. I know nothing about farm operation. I know nothing about the balancing of one crop as against the other, in the main, but I have read articles—there is no need to go through the details of them, although I have some of them here—which say this, that there will be a greater necessity for mechanised farming after the war than ever before. I have read articles by people who do not agree that that type of mechanisation is impossible simply because farms are divided up into separate ownership. It does not appear to me to matter a whole lot. The peasant proprietorship is something which will never be cleared out of the country and nobody expects or hopes that it will. It does not, however, seem to me to be the only factor in the situation, that land should be separately owned. It is surely more a question of how the land is used. I have seen plans—they may be Utopian and they may be plans which the temper of the people would not allow to operate or to which they would not easily turn; there may be deficiencies and defects to be found in them—which have been sent forward for examination both here and in England as to how there could be what is called a common pool of machinery, for use according to the needs of a particular group, and that could be done irrespective entirely of the separate ownership of pieces of land.
I have seen other articles which say that our development of agricultural technique has advanced nothing in the last 30 years. I have seen detailed statements by way of comparison as to the developments that took place in New Zealand in connection with the production of butter and the production of cheese, and in other countries with regard to various other products, Denmark being one great example of a country with which we are competitors. The conclusion to be drawn from any of these articles is that there have been technical developments elsewhere, as a result of which they get increased yields of milk and increased yields of every sort of crop, and that we are sadly lacking in our application of them.
There, again, it is easy for me, a townsman, to say these things from a theoretical reading. I do not want what I have said to be put to this conclusion, that, therefore, the farming part of the community is in default to the rest of the community, because, again, I understand that one of the sore points—and Deputy Sheldon referred to it—is the fact that while credit can be made available for all sorts of mad schemes so far as the towns are concerned, credit is restricted, and narrowly restricted, in the countryside.
Deputy Sheldon referred to Denmark, and I take one extract from the article which I expect is the article on which he founded part of his comments—a paper read by Dr. Beddy before the Statistical Society in November of last year. He there gives figures which Deputy Sheldon understated last night. He gives figures of what is called the capital investment in agriculture here as compared with Denmark. In Denmark there is a variety of debts arising from different sources, and fed in through different banks and different societies, but the entire total comes to about £198,000,000, and, per acre of cultivated land, the debt is £25 10s. od. In this country, the debt comparable with that is 25/- per cultivated acre. If certain other things are taken into the calculation for this country, it might be said for comparison's sake that the debt per cultivated acre is £3 10s. od., but that has to be compared with a debt of £25 10s. od. per cultivated acre in Denmark.
Debt is something which some people shrink from. It has been said in a recent book on economics that debt is only a standard, that it is only a testimonial of the credit-worthiness of the person in debt, and that credit, on the other hand, is only a measure of the amount of debt which a person should be allowed to incur. Debt and credit can be taken as more or less equal, according to these definitions. Certainly, according to that, here we are again with our enormous external assets abroad of £300,000,000, and we find that the capital investment in agriculture here, at the highest, tots up to £3 10s. od. per cultivated acre, the comparable figure being 25/-; whereas in Denmark the amount invested per cultivated acre is £25 10s. Od. I think that is the root evil in the whole situation. It may be that that is over-simplifying a very difficult problem, and, of course, there are all these other problems which speakers here have spoken of in the past four or five days; but that at least is a fundamental matter.
It is also of interest to note that, in speaking of the national debt of the two States, it is pointed out that there was a time when Denmark occupied the same happy position as we are in, of being a creditor nation. Away back in 1871, Denmark had a credit balance abroad, but since 1871 she has brought all that money home, and is now a debtor on foreign markets to the extent of nearly £30,000,000. In 1871, foreign countries owed Denmark money; now Denmark owes the world £30,000,000. But we are still in the happy position that we have all sorts of people abroad owing us money, and we apparently cannot finance a better agricultural structure than the one that has produced the results I speak of.
Dr. Beddy, concluding this paper, after speaking of these financial matters, gave certain figures which indicated the standards of living in Denmark and here, and in every point, except, I think, two, we were below the level of Denmark. We were a greater tea-drinking nation than Denmark, but, on the other hand, Denmark was one of the greatest coffee-drinking nations in the whole community, so that these can be almost wiped out, one against the other. So far as other things are concerned, excepting only butter and milk, we occupy an inferior position, judged by the test of a standard of living, compared with the Danes, and that particular matter of our greater consumption of butter and milk, according to Dr. Beddy, is a reflection of our relatively low purchasing power, which restricts the shopping activities of the rural population, so that, even on that point, we cannot pride ourselves that it is a sign of a higher standard. Indeed, it is the other way about.
Finally Dr. Beddy quotes another article which was written by one of the officials of the Agricultural Organisation Society, and, as the two seem to have met on this point, I think it just as well to put the phrase on record for comparison. In an article in Studies for the month of December, 1938, the phrase is used that the way towards improving the whole condition of this country lies in the full development of our agriculture, on the basis of improved technique to meet the special problems of our climatic conditions. Doctor Beddy's phrase is so nearly an echo of that that I want to get it in in comparison:—
"If Eire is to advance towards the realisation of her true and greater economic destiny it can only be on the basis of an agricultural system involving a far more intensive utilisation of her natural resources than at present."
Later, he says:—
"At any rate the task of gearing a more highly developed agricultural system to the most suitable available volume and type of export trade is not an insuperable one."
I am not going to weary the House for a much longer period. I have seen statistical information about our exports. I have seen these investigated particularly with regard to the export of such things as butter, eggs, poultry and other things of that type. I have seen statistics which show that in a period of about 12 years—in a period less than ten years—New Zealand had almost doubled certain exports in these lines in which we are competitors with her. Our exports virtually have not moved at all. Sometimes they went up, sometimes they went down, but, on the average, they were about the same. I know that opposite us there is a great market. People sometimes question in these articles whether, if you did get more intensive cultivation and better agricultural production, you could sell what you produce. It was pointed out that as far as dairy produce is concerned our pre-war effect on United Kingdom importation was 3 per cent. of all brought in and, if we doubled our exports of dairy products, as a whole, it would mean nothing more or less than the difference between a good and a bad season in England. We appear to have a market and we appear to have climatic conditions here that other countries envy. We have for over 20 years, with two Governments, been trying to get our agriculture into a better condition and, at the end, we are still just where we started. Our marriages are in numbers decreasing, and the time of them is getting later and later. The flight from marriage and the flight from parenthood is going on. The flight from the country, which had been stopped about 1930-31, is in progress, and we know from that angle of emigration that we are going to be subjected to much greater temptations in the near future than ever before. I see nothing in the present Estimate to give us any hope that there is Ministerial policy which will stop that.
