Before Question Time I was asking how we could ensure that those young people who are going into farming have the best possible education. It is recognised that in the past those who entered agriculture did not have such a good standard of education in technical and other areas. Deputy D'Arcy felt we needed more agricultural colleges but I expressed the view that the existing system at primary and second level should be used to ensure that the standard of agricultural education was enhanced. With the involvement of the advisory services and local agricultural instructors it should be possible to introduce some scheme in the immediate future. The winter farm schools and the efforts of ACOT are a help but, obviously, more must be done. The Minister should, as far as possible, make the necessary funds available.
Deputy Bruton belittled the interest subsidy announced earlier this year. While it is clear that more has to be done in that area Deputy Bruton should have suggested a different scheme rather than belittle the one that has been introduced. I should like to categorise the areas where the Government will be giving help because there are essential differences between the categories of farmers who are in financial difficulty. I regard the farmer who is carrying out essential building and land improvement in the first category of importance. The scale of that type of development in the last six or seven years has been enormous by any standards. The amount of money expended in providing winter facilities and in land improvement was such that we can carry greater livestock numbers and house them in the winter. In spite of the economic climate and other pressures we are poised, because of that phenomenal development, to carry greater stocks. That will be of enormous benefit to the farming community and the country.
The second category I should like to refer to are the farmers who purchase land to enlarge their holdings, particularly small and medium sized holdings. Unfortunately, where such land adjoined them farmers paid more than the value for the land. They got help from the financial institutions, particularly the banks who must share part of the responsibility for the excessive amounts paid for such land and for setting up unnecessary competition. Help must be given to that area. In some instances borrowings reached limits of £1,000 per cow in the dairy sector and up to £500 per acre for other farming enterprises. The repayments on loans of that order are not within the capacity of many farmers. Therefore, farmers welcome the restructuring of loans that is taking place. Inevitably, there will be a small percentage of farmers, even with the restructuring, who will not be saved from the pressures that exist with the result that the amount of debt will increase. Special help is needed in such cases because many of those farmers acted on the advice of local instructors and successive Governments in carrying out major developments. It is because they were the pioneers in such work that any disaster which affects them would have the effect of discouraging others who have not improved their holdings.
The third category I should like to refer to are those who are big in farming already and who made an effort to enlarge their holdings. It is not easy to expect any Government in the climate that exists at present to carry the can in such situations. I am not saying that I would rule out such people completely but they would not be as high on my priority list as the other categories I referred to. When referring to prices and the efforts being made in Brussels to market our agricultural produce generally I mentioned that it is hard for the public generally to reconcile certain facts about the world scene. It is hard for the average person to reconcile the fact that there are mountains of this-and-that in Europe with the fact that a quarter of the world's population is hungry and that 17,000,000 children will die of hunger in the next five years, if existing conditions continue.
The food aid programme for the Commission to be worked out in Brussels must give scope for the transfer of some of those resources to countries who need them although, admittedly, the best solution is for those countries to develop themselves. In recent times North African countries, Libya, Tunisia and Morocco, have made significant sales. Here I wish to pay tribute to the Purcell brothers of County Tipperary for what they have done this year in establishing markets for store and beef categories in Libya and Tunisia. They helped very considerably in keeping the price of cattle up all during this year. While the numbers of exports of live stores are controversial, there are two shades of opinion on it. In all the experience we have here, it is necessary to safeguard the prices by having a percentage of our cattle exported live. It is very important that we maintain this in future. It is important, too, that the sales of those cattle do not reach any more than the necessary levels, in order to maintain healthy competition with the processing units.
I want to welcome a statement by the Minister although it is not dealt with in the Estimate. I anticipate the same degree of leniency from the Ceann Comhairle as seemed to be apparent in earlier discussions. I welcome the statement by the Minister that the White Paper on land policy is about to be circulated. This is an area which comes under the Department of Agriculture and it is awaited with some degree of hope and expectancy by many people. The existing Land Commission evolved from a series of land Acts at the end of the last century which were updated and strengthened at five or six different periods up to about 1965. They cover tenant land purchase, compulsory acquisition, land restructuring programmes, controlled sub-division and a farm retirement scheme, to mention a few. There is no doubt that in many areas the Land Commission have made a significant contribution; equally it is necessary for the future that it be restructured and brought up to date so that it may deal more effectively with the land problems that are there. The task is formidable. There are no easy solutions. Sixty five per cent of our holdings are under 50 acres. Twenty three per cent of farmers are over 65 years. About half the holdings in the country are fragmented and are concentrated in the west and north west. Up to 50,000 farmers have no direct heirs.
I could give other statistics but those are enough to indicate the task that lies before a rejuvenated Land Commission, which will tackle them in the future. It is clear that all these problems cannot be solved by a State agency, only a small percentage of land comes on the open market each year. About 92 per cent of land holdings transfers take place within the family or extended family. We have to accept that it is extremely difficult to devise a national strategy for land use, for fragmentation, poor farm soil, and to have a policy that will be sensitive to regional needs. We hope that the discussions which will take place on the White Paper will be helpful in evolving a system which can tackle the problems I have already mentioned. It is clear that a curb is necessary to prevent bigger farmers from buying more land. Proposals in this regard, if they are effective, will be welcome.
One of the areas that should be tackled more vigorously by the Commission is fragmented holdings, even where there is no land for sale. We all know of clusters of houses with fragmented holdings and individual farmers with land which is totally mixed. The Commission should involve itself more in encouraging farmers, wherever possible, to consolidate their holdings. Macra na Feirme and other interested groups should also help farmers to extract the maximum potential from their land. Anybody who understands agriculture knows that that is only possible if all the land is together.
I would like to see a better division of commonages. They are a prime example of under-productive blocks of land.
