On the motion which was adjourned last night, I take the same view as Senator Baxter, but I approach it on rather different lines. My approach is this: that on the figures which have been made available by the Department, and from the Minister's own pronouncements, the acreage which has been asked for is too low and the barrelage which it is expected will be produced by the farmers is infinitely lower than will be obtained and, as a result, the provision of food for the next year is definitely inadequate. There is also the probability of not being able to import some 80,000 tons of wheat which we still require for bread. Now, from the Minister's figures in the Dáil we get two things fairly clearly, and that is that we want 370,000 tons of wheat, and that this implies 600,000 acres at seven barrels to the acre. No figures at all have been given as regards what supplies are available for animal feeding outside of oats, which is not a substitute for maize or wheat and their offals, and no provision has been made for seed. In fact, the question has been handled in a very slip-shod way.
It seems to me almost incredible that we, in a purely agricultural country with a small population, should be considering even for a moment the possibility of a partial starvation of our people, that Ministers should be speaking in the country and that the Press should be sending out S.O.S. messages on the growing of wheat, and that we farming representatives in the Seanad and in the Dáil should be urging the Government to make provision for those people in the country who cannot grow it for themselves. I greatly regret the absence of the Minister from a debate of such very great importance. Yesterday he intervened early in the debate with what I would call a superficial and unconvincing speech on a question of such great importance to us all.
I agree with Senator Baxter that the main factor in further production is price. The farmer, any more than any other business man, will not produce at a disadvantage, and I say that the present price, on the costings which are available for different types of land, is inadequate when the barrelage falls below a certain point. The whole crux of this question is the interrelation between price and production. The farmer who, before the tillage scheme, had a different economy on his farm, worked on other lines because it suited his market, it suited his pocket and it suited his land better than tillage; otherwise he would have tilled. When he changed his economy, he suffered several very important consequential losses. In the first place, he had to take his best land, where up to that he had been rearing stores and fattening cattle. He suffered another great loss, the loss of his oat straw, which is 200 per cent. better than wheat straw for feeding; in fact, very few people use wheat straw at all if they can help it. Over and above that, he suffered the loss of the hay consequent on the increase of tillage, with the exception of those portions of his land which were under first and second grass seeds. Add all those together, and you will find that the consequential losses were very considerable.
Again, he suffered from the exhaustion of his land through tillage when farmyard manure—which never goes far enough on anybody's farm— and an adequate amount of artificial manures were absent. I will not develop any of the minor consequential losses, but I think all those disabilities should be added up when you assess a price which will not only pay the farmer for growing wheat for the nation but will leave him a reasonable profit to keep his own family and pay his way. If the price were right, there is no doubt at all that you would not only get without difficulty the 80,000 tons of which we are apparently short, but also the quantity necessary for providing the animal food which we have been importing from other countries on account of the price being lower than that at which we could grow it here. The standstill order to the malting industry came as no surprise. On top of that, we had this warning, which we now know is only a temporary one, with regard to the exportation of stores; we were urged to push them out on account of the shortage of feeding stuffs. That in itself points to a great want of prevision in the last two years.
As to costings, the Minister in his quick speech here chided Senator Baxter for not producing any figures. A good many of us are to speak to-night, and I think before we have done the Minister will have got all the figures he wants from various farmers on different types of land all over the country. In spite of what the Minister told the Dáil—it will be found in the Dáil report of 10th December—to the effect that he had no costing figures whatever with regard to wheat, I think there would have been very little difficulty in getting the average cost of production if his Department had only followed the scheme which other countries have followed for years past. I may say that the science of keeping agricultural costings, accurate down to decimals, is a thing of very long standing. In our case, the cost will vary on farms in different parts of the country, but it is a figure which can be arrived at without any serious difficulty by people who are experienced in accounts. Take a group of farms from the Statistical Abstract. You have every type, and I see absolutely no difficulty in being able to tell a farmer in any part of the country what it is going to cost him to grow wheat. Then he knows that if he gets a certain number of barrels he will make a profit, but that if it goes below that number of barrels he will make a loss. He can make his calculations accordingly, and if he has to incur a loss the price must be raised to compensate him. Without figures, the Minister cannot say whether or not it is going to pay the farmer to grow wheat at 45/-, and it amazes me that any Minister should have stood up in the other House or in this House and not be taken to task for suggesting, in an agricultural country, like this, that he had no costings of any kind. He knows no more to-day whether 45/- is the right figure than he did some years ago.
When the Tillage Order originally came before this House, Senator Baxter and I criticised the principles on which it was based. The Minister admitted since then in the other House that he had no figures whatever. His answers to questions on that subject will be found in volume 78 of the proceedings of Dáil Eireann, page 580. To every question with regard to whether he had made any inquiries as to what the tillage scheme was going to mean in the shape of acreage or in the shape of capital expended by the farmer, the answer was "no"—a straight "no".
It is no satisfaction to either of us that the results have proved us to be correct. But I think it is right to record the fact that the advice we offered was disregarded. I think the fact that this whole business was taken on in a slipshod manner is a matter which should be recorded.
Still it is somewhat difficult to know where we stand in this matter. Yesterday, and in the Dáil on the 10th December, the Minister stated that he had no figures to give—that figures could not be got. But on the 18th April, 1928, he put his hand to an exhaustive Minority Report of the Economic Commission on this very same subject. In that report he told us that, after sowing on manured and cleaned land under the best possible conditions, and after using artificials, which everybody cannot get to-day— there is not a scrap of lime to be got by anybody in my county—the net amount of wheat suitable and available for milling purposes, that is, after deducting seed and small corn, was 16 cwt., or 6.4 barrels per acre. To-day there is an average of seven barrels given and last year eight barrels. That cannot be the case.
There is this point about that, and it is a very big one: if, instead of the seven barrels which the Minister is reckoning on at present, it should be 6.4 barrels, as it was under his signature then, the 600,000 acres which he is asking for in order to provide the necessary bread for the people will be short by a minimum of 65,000 acres. It is a very clear and simple mathematical point and I hope the House will realise it. That figure does not take into account the fact that a great deal of land, which Griffiths would not have looked at for growing wheat, has perforce been taken into cultivation by people who hoped to make it pay and since then have found it would not pay. I know one farmer who for three years running has had to plough up his winter wheat.
Then we have another point, and this is the acid test to my mind. A big wheat experiment was undertaken by the Department of Agriculture in the year 1925-26. It was called a Large-Scale Wheat Experiment. This again gives us further proof that you will not throughout the country get a production of seven barrels to the acre. The evidence of the Department before the Tariff Commission mentioned an average yield of nine barrels of dressed wheat from 197 centres, which they stated were "above the average in fertility." They were provided with manures and good seed and the whole process of growing the wheat was supervised and nursed by the agricultural instructors. What was the result? An average of nine barrels to the acre from 197 centres. I will say that some centres produced as much as 17 barrels but others produced less than three. Of course the 17 barrels were few and far between. But there was one important point, that 92 centres outside those, that is one-third of the whole experiment, were not weighed at all for various reasons. All of these were also "above the average in fertility"; they were nursed in the same way and provided with the same seeds and manure; but for various reasons they were not weighed.
Those various reasons, in my opinion, are going to make themselves more and more evident as time goes on and more wheat is grown on the only land which is available, with a continuous reduction of artificial manures and the spreading of what farmyard manure we have over a larger area. When 92 centres, or one-third of those centres were not weighed, it is obvious that the average given for the remainder of the experiment of nine barrels is going to be reduced right down to six, or even less than that, and I for one cannot accept either seven or six and a half barrels throughout the country under present conditions.
Averages are a rough-and-ready guide, but they are apt to be misleading and in this case particularly so. The acid test is the price an article makes in the market. In ordinary times it is only possible to grow wheat at a profit on very good land, but as the price increased so did the acreage expand. People began to extend their experiments to see whether they could not grow it on other land. But we have now reached the position in this country where such land as can be spared from other parts of our economy and on which wheat can be grown at a profit is not sufficient for our present needs. From now on, if you want to make up the balance, you will have to use land which is not such as a farmer would normally put under wheat.
It has been said before now that there is a prejudice against growing wheat. That is not the case at all. It is only a question of having the proper land to do it. It follows, therefore, that if you want to persuade people to grow wheat on land which is not really suitable to produce wheat at the profit which a farmer should have, then you have to put up the price to make that profit. I am not trying to help the bigger farmers because, even with their rents and rates, their produce is so big that they will make an excellent profit out of it. But, if you want to increase the acreage, you have to make it attractive to the men who are farming on the light land and poor land and the small farm. We want to persuade the man who gets a small return to grow.
The Minority Report gave costings which showed a profit, but they very airily ignored rent and rates and a great proportion of the labour costs on the farm. They did not put in any costings as regards family labour at all, and they showed a profit.
The figures I propose to give you now are for a farm of lightish land, without taking account of all those consequential costs which I have suggested to you already and without taking account of any insurance against risks such as those I have referred to. In this particular case the costings were £14 4s. At seven barrels to the acre, allowing for 2 cwt. of small corn and for the wheat straw at not more than 6d. —in fact, in most places there is no market for it at all, unless you happen to be near a town—a man makes a profit of £3 6s. At six barrels to the acre he makes a profit of £2 17s. and at five and a half barrels to the acre— which is the figure I think correct— he makes a loss of £1 2s.
How does that compare with what the Minority Report originally suggested that a farmer should get from feeding an ordinary bullock or producing milk? In the case of bullock feeding, they gave a figure of £5 12s. 5d., and in the case of milk, £5 19s. 0d. All that is under the Minister's signature in an official publication to-day. The Minister has made some other statements—one of them was that soil exhaustion from wheat growing is a thing which is greatly over-estimated. I am quoting from a publication which everyone knows. It says:—
"Wheat can, in fact, be grown continuously on the same soil, without any intervening crop and without manure of any description for half a century or more, if need be."
However, nobody will contend that that method is economic, and it can only be done in practice as an interesting experiment. It is obviously undesirable that the Minister should broadcast statements of this kind to the country, and to the effect that there is no soil exhaustion from growing wheat, particularly in the present circumstances, when we all know that the average farmer may not be able to pay for the artificials, if he can get them at all. Probably what was in the Minister's mind when he made the statement was the classic example— which a great many of us know—of the Broadbank field at Rothampstead where wheat has been grown on the same field continuously for the last 70 years; but if he has that in mind he should have added to his statement that, in that particular case, not only has the yield fallen to microscopic proportions, but the greatest difficulty in maintaining the experiment is the battle against the weeds, which have grown so that you can hardly see the corn at all.
We agree that the best way to grow wheat is following a well-manured root crop. The main use of a root crop today—I am not including potatoes—is the cleaning of the land for the cereal crop, and that cleaning is done at an additional cost. If you add the work of cleaning, manure and labour, it is a very considerable loss, and if you have any system of cost accounting to show the farmer what he is really going to get out of growing an acre of wheat, that cleaning process in a four-year rotation should be taken into account, and a definite amount of expenses added on account of it. If you intend to give the farmer a fair deal, you must allow for the consequential cost, and finally—what nobody has even suggested—you must give him a fair trading risk and say just what he will get on the minimum average which land will produce. You must remember that the farmer is not always growing wheat on well-manured and beautifully clean land. He is often ploughing up old pasture, which takes a very long time and great expense to restore, and he is releasing the pent-up fertility of the land in so doing, and the expense of restoring it will be very considerable. The wise farmer knows this, and before he decides to tackle that he thinks twice, and the Minister should think twice and provide him with reasonable compensation. It really amounts to using up his capital to get a return in the first two or three years which is immediately dissipated when the emergency is over and he has to lay it down again.
I think there is a very sound case, as some of the other speakers will show, for an increase in price. We have to get this wheat which is absolutely essential to the country, and we would be very wise to put this question of importation out of our minds entirely, and try to grow what we can in our own country, releasing shipping for other purposes, and making ourselves secure on the lines of the self-sufficiency which has been preached for many years past.
At the price which has been suggested, I think that the farmer can make a fair profit, and I suggest that every farmer should be asked to grow a proportion of wheat in his tillage and to contract, with reasonable safeguards—I will not develop them now— against the failure of his crop through circumstances which are not under his control. At the end of the season, he should deliver to the Government or the miller at the rate of five barrels— I am conservative on this question, but not very—of millable wheat and let him then, if he grows more, sell to the Government if he wishes or keep it and use it for his stock. If you get an acreage which will produce our human food on that basis, you will incidentally get a very large amount of the animal food and the seed, for which no provision has been made. The farmer should be paid at the rate of 50/- a barrel and he should get cartage and the loan of sacks, and last, but not least, he should have his contract over a period of four years.
Now, my friend Senator Sir John Keane, who invariably criticises any suggestion I make—more or less on principle, sometimes without any guiding principle, and generally in an unprincipled way—will, I feel perfectly sure, say that no Government could stand over a contract like that, but I ask the House what business firm in this country would undertake to alter its economy, put in new machinery and start a new industry for the country without, at any rate, some assurance of a degree of permanency. I am only asking for four years. Possibly, Senator Keane may add that no capital is required for this operation of growing wheat, that the farmer has only got to borrow a spade from his neighbour and start. I do not quite agree with that. As regards how to get this wheat grown, it was suggested that farmers should be compelled to sow wheat, but I prefer to appeal to them in the way the Minister and the Government have done. I suggest that, as in England, a scheme of this kind should be decentralised to the agricultural committees of the county councils. Their co-operation should be asked and a certain definite quota of land to be put under wheat should be allotted to each of them. I think that much of the apathy in this and a lot of other matters of national life arises from the fact that these local authorities are not consulted or brought into co-operation by the Government. In fact, most local bodies regard Dublin as the centre of everything, and the place from which they get refusals of everything they want and a stream of sealed orders. I believe that, if the agricultural committees were used, you would get the co-operation of the very best farming element, people who are 100 per cent. closer to the growers of wheat than anybody in a Dublin office can possibly be. These people have other preoccupations and their perspective extends only across Merrion Square. You have set up these local authorities and you have given them authority in many other ways as a necessary complement to the central administration. Now is the time to use them to the full. If they fail, I shall throw my hands up, but I am perfectly certain that if their co-operation is sought they will not fail you.
Those who read An Taoiseach's broadcast at the end of last year and followed it up by reading the British Prime Minister's address to the Congress of the U.S.A. must begin to realise the difficulties which we will have to contend with in the near future. They should realise that the time for undignified haggling with the farmer is past. I was told by a very important person in this country a few hours ago that this was the most important matter before the country to-day, that it was worth paying anything up to 90/- to make absolutely certain that under no circumstances would the people go short of food. I am not going as far as that. I am convinced that, by a proper scheme, you will get the proper results. This haggling has been the more undignified because the farmer is the biggest employer of labour in this country and the only real producer of wealth on a large scale. As a result, he pays for everything. It is on the welfare of the farmer that the weal of everybody else depends. Though I may be fighting the battle of the farmer, I am also fighting the battle of those for whom he is paying, and I feel that it is very important that all of us should take responsibility for seeing that he gets the fruits of his labours now and security in the future.
On the question of censorship, what is the position of the Censor of the Press in respect of debates in this House? If a newspaper desires to publish in extenso a speech delivered here, is it at liberty to publish such a speech or has the Censor the right to intervene?
