Minimum Price for Wheat—Motion.

The McGillycuddy

I move:—

That, in the opinion of the Seanad, further steps require to be taken to encourage an increased production of wheat; in particular, the House recommends that the minimum price of 50/- per barrel for millable wheat, which has been guaranteed for the coming season, be assured to wheat growers over a period of years.

This motion has been put down by Senator Crosbie, Senator McGee, and myself. Unfortunately I heard from Senator Baxter too late to add his name to the movers of the motion. Thus, it has the support of four persons with an interest in agriculture. As I have said, it has been in the hands of the Clerk for practically a month. We postponed the motion so that in no circumstances would we give the impression that we were trying to interfere with the national effort or to upset the farming community during this particular time of sowing. The main object of the motion is to second the representations which have been made in the Dáil to the Government from both sides of the House in connection with the want of energy which they have displayed in this very grave emergency, and to ensure a measure of security for farmers who have been doing for years past, and are doing this year, their utmost to provide the essential food for our people. It seems to me almost incredible that the machinery of a modern Government in an agricultural country like this, which has hitherto been practically untouched by the war, and whose main competitors have been practically eliminated, has not been able to save the country from being short of essential foodstuffs.

What is the position? We are short of bread for the people. We have a very nebulous idea as to the amount of cereals we will get next year. In a reply to a question addressed to the Minister in the Dáil, asking him whether he could state approximately the acreage of wheat, oats and barley which had been set in the country up to date, the Minister said that he was quite unable to do so. So we really do not know where we are. We know that our poultry industry has dwindled almost by some 2,000,000 head, and our pig production will soon be a thing of the past. For the time being we have saved our brewery trade by a deal with a country whose people require our products and who are fighting a hard battle for themselves and, incidentally for us. With a firm policy at the outset of the war two and a half years ago, putting aside political considerations, with a little study of past history and proper organisation of our country's main resources, we would have made ourselves not only absolutely self-sufficient but would have had a surplus to export and with which to make money. Elsewhere, I have seen a good deal of personal abuse of the Minister and I deprecate it. Clever, offensive verbiage may be all right for the crossroads, but it cuts no ice in "higher" debate. In this matter the Minister himself is not entirely to blame; this unfortunate position is the collective responsibility of the Government and of the Taoiseach, in particular, as its Head. One and all, they must have been aware of the decline of our economy and collectively they should have taken adequate and drastic steps to settle it. The Minister is not quite without blame; he must bear his own part of it and that a very considerable part. He is the man most able to tell his colleagues the real situation, to warn them of a worsening outlook, to recommend appropriate remedies and to resign if his advice was not accepted. When we were last discussing this matter in the House, he hurriedly left us to tell the country that there was to be no increase in the price of wheat; only a few days before the price which we were then asking for was granted. I do not wish to be offensive, but I must say that his attitude in regard to this crisis, when he could have shown himself to be a master man, the biggest man in the country is very difficult to understand and certainly does not make for confidence.

Figures are rather apt to weary people, but I must give the House two simple statistics. The first is that we require 2,700,000 sacks of flour to feed our people and, now that we are milling 100 per cent., it means that number of barrels of wheat. The second is that in the year 1929, when we were feeding and exporting at a very high figure, we produced 1,800,000 cwts. of offals and we imported 470,000. We mixed that with maize and fed pigs, poultry and cattle, to produce bacon, eggs, milk and butter. Now, we should be growing barley and wheat in equal quantity to make that good, but as it is we have nothing at all in the shape of wheat offals and no steps whatever are being taken to produce them. There is very little wonder that we stand as we do, and that pigs, eggs, poultry and butter, instead of being lucrative export commodities, will very soon be things of the past, even in our own dietary. The situation has been accentuated a good deal by the fact that no steps have been taken to provide an alternative to maize.

I must say I find it extremely hard to blame those farmers who have fed wheat to their animals. It is in the present situation rather like jailing a woman for stealing to feed her starving child for whom the State has made no provision. The position which gave cause for these prosecutions should never have been allowed to arise. The full responsibility for the want of essential animal and human food and the decline of our export trade rests not on the Minister individually but on the Government as a whole, whose business it is to see that people and animals are cared for. The obvious course would have been in the beginning — though I know it is easy to be wise after the event — to put under cereals a sufficient acreage to meet all requirements without considering recourse to imports. Instead, we have had a half-hearted policy of voluntary tillage, of advertisements to the country—"Feed the people"; "Grow more wheat", and so on — and that policy has not been vigorously enforced. The result is that, so far as supplies of food are concerned, we are going steadily from bad to worse. Exemptions seem to be far too wide in their application. The estimates made by inspectors of what is arable land or not err, particularly in the grass lands, very much on the side of leniency.

I am aware of cases where after inspections have been undertaken action has been postponed until it has been too late to do any sowing for this season or no action has been taken at all. No doubt there would be difficulties in taking this course which I am now going to propose to the Minister in a constructive manner. I think that the difficulties, if they cannot all be overcome in toto, can be overcome in very great part. What I suggest to him now in general terms is that when he leaves this House he goes to his officials and says: “I want your proposals with a view to ensuring sufficient food to feed the whole of this country in the 1943 season. I also want wheat offals, and oats to equal production and imports in 1929, and a barley programme to make good the maize which we used in the same year. I want you to work generally on these lines. You can envisage compulsory tillage up to your requirements to achieve the object in view, on all the 218,000 holdings in the country which are over £7 valuation, and you can give a bonus to all smaller holdings which contract to grow wheat and vegetables.

"First of all, I want you to work out the quota which must be allotted to each, in order to ensure a sufficiency of bread, and then add what is necessary to find the bran and pollard we require. Then I would like you to go on to the oats, because the straw from the oats will, in very good part, make up for the hay which is lost after the first year of compulsory tillage and, what is more, will make up to a certain extent for the want of essentials in the country, owing to the fact that there will be more manure made through the tying up of animals in the winter. Finally, I want you to tell me where and how to get the barley I require. You naturally have to make considerable exemptions per bag for unsuitable land, but the existing easements on the good land must be tightened up to provide machinery and seed on loan, where it is really necessary.

"Get out a scheme for a tillage committee in each county to carry out definite regulations with the assistance of the Gárdaí and L.S.F., and make those regulations as simple as you possibly can." I think you should have somebody up here to whom the various county committees could apply to in difficulty, somebody who could give them an immediate answer and let them get on with the job. I would say: "I want you to draft an order for the Government to stop all further emigration of agricultural workers, and, finally, I want you to give me an estimate of what subsidies will be required to get this scheme into being. These proposals you must give me by the 15th June, and then, when I have looked them over, I propose to discuss them with a Committee of both Houses, before I put them into shape for the Government to sanction. I do want you officials to bear in mind that a full provision of cereals with a margin to cover a bad season or additional requirements, is the first consideration for this country, and the second is the restablishment of our export trade even if we have got to give subsidies in very large measure. But, before that, the stuff must be there and it has got to be brought up to the highest possible point."

This proposal sounds a rather lengthy one, but it is in general terms. It does imply that somebody grasps the nettle — and that quickly and firmly. So far as the food situation is concerned the nettle requires to be grasped very quickly and very firmly indeed. That is the proposal I have to make. As regards the second part of the amendment, it is going from the general to what I call the particular. If the Minister accepts my proposal and goes into it with his officials, there is very little need to say anything more. If, on the other hand, he thinks the present situation is satisfactory, then we must press for the recognition of the effort which is being made by the majority of the farmers to meet the present emergency, an effort which would want to be continued, and ask that wheat growers be assured of a guaranteed price for so long as hostilities continue and for not less than three years thereafter. This further period is to allow for readjustments in the event of post-war conditions calling for a change of economy.

I have been prompted to put forward this proposal by the fact that the Minister appears to realise the importance of giving a guarantee of this nature, in so far as he told Senator Crosbie at a public meeting in Cork City that he was prepared to consider the matter. As a matter of fact, we are asking no more than the security of the capital invested in what amounts to a new undertaking on a large scale, and only on terms similar to those which have been accorded broadcast to a very large number of industrial concerns which have been born, and have lived, and have died — some of them, not all of them — in this country during the last few years, and which the agricultural community have paid for in toto. If the Government, on the other hand, are not disposed to give us this guarantee the implication is very clear, and that is that if hostilities were to cease and as soon as cheap wheat can be imported, as well as cheap maize, the farmer with increased tillage could be left high and dry with a large extent of uneconomic tillage and without the means, in the shape of money, to readjust his economy. However, there is very ample precedent for the necessity of this guarantee when we recollect the effect of the repeal of the Corn Production Act in 1919 after the last war. The result was that many thousands of farmers were ruined — stuck in the banks for years afterwards — and quantities of good arable land, which could have gone back to grass, instead of being sown down was “tumbled down” to very poor pasture indeed.

I have one word more to say for this motion. We have advisedly used the word "minimum" as regards 50/- per barrel. I say definitely that we are satisfied with it, at the present time, but we naturally reserve the right to press for an increase in price in proportion to the amount by which farm costings and the cost of living of the farmer may increase in the coming years.

Mr. Crosbie

I beg formally to second the motion, and I reserve my right to speak on it later on.

Mr. Byrne

I move the amendment standing in my name:—

After the word "recommends" to insert the words:—"the continuance of the Tillage Order amended by the inclusion of a clause providing for a compulsory area under wheat and on these conditions further recommends".

I should like to say that the reason I put down this amendment was because I desired to get the House to discuss certain aspects of the tillage problem. On the last occasion, when I put down a motion of a similar nature, someone suggested that it had been inspired. I explained at the time that it had not, but, in case anybody is under a similar impression now, I should like to explain that no one saw this amendment until I handed it to the Clerk on Friday evening. I think it is fairly clear that emergency conditions will exist even for some time after the war has finished, and it is important that this country should not be allowed to drift into the position which it occupied many years ago. We should never allow the country to drift back to a non-tillage policy. In the years that followed the last war, we saw the land gradually going out of tillage, probably to a large extent because tillage did not pay, but also because many people in the country have a distaste for tillage, to say the least of it. The result was that about 1929 the best price which people could get for wheat was 13/- a barrel. In 1931, I think, oats was imported here from Russia, and the price fell to about 6/- a barrel. During those years, not only were we importing wheat from Canada and Australia, but we also imported it from Germany, and we went to Russia for oats. During those years we called ourselves an agricultural nation, although we were importing probably half the agricultural products we required to feed ourselves.

If this country is ever to become a really prosperous State we will have to put the agricultural community on its feet, and we can only do that by getting them back to the plough. We have to create a situation in which the man on the land will get an economic price for what he produces. When I refer to an economic price, I mean a price which will give him something for himself and his family after he has paid his costs of production and given a decent wage to his workers. I would argue that tillage need not interfere with our cattle trade. In fact, I could bring forward strong evidence to show that the more tillage we have the more cattle and the better cattle we will have. Under the last Administration, there was an inquiry into derating, and various people from all parts of the country were invited to give evidence.

I think Senator Baxter was a member of that commission. Among the people who gave evidence before it was Mr. D.J. Cogan, who was a Member of Parliament for East Wicklow, a very successful business man and farmer, and a very successful producer of pedigree stock. He is a man who probably knows as much about agriculture and the cattle trade as most people, and in his evidence before that commission he advocated that, instead of derating, we should give £1 for every acre tilled. He based his whole idea on my present argument that the more land we have under tillage the more cattle and the better cattle we will have. In a large portion of the south of Ireland at the present time you will find what is simply a grass industry. The people send their milk to the creameries, and when they put in their cows in winter they simply throw them a bit of hay. The same applies in parts of other counties, where you would not see even a potato patch. No country can prosper under those conditions. We have to get the people back to tillage, and, if we are to give the prices which are suggested, we must keep our Tillage Orders in operation.

In Leinster, the part of Ireland with which I am most familiar, we have to till fairly extensively, because it is necessary to house-feed our cattle in winter. In my district I doubt if there was one man who had to plough an extra acre under the Compulsory Tillage Order, although most of them, I am glad to say, did so. There was no obligation on them to do any extra tillage because they were already tilling the necessary amount. I think that, if dairying is to prosper in the south, we will have to put it on that basis. If we do not go back to the plough there is no use talking about keeping the people in the country. With regard to wheat, I am glad that on the last occasion the Seanad did not take the Minister's advice, but passed a motion in favour of a percentage of wheat being included in the area of tillage. I argued at that time that I did not want to impose an undue burden on anybody. I merely suggested that, in the case of a man who had to till 25 acres, a fifth or a sixth of that should be wheat. We hear arguments about hilly ground and so on. In my county, we have to contend with all those difficulties and we are able to overcome them. If any district is found to be particularly unsuitable for wheat growing, arrangements could easily be made for its exemption.

A man with ten acres of arable land would have to till only two and a half acres, and surely he could include a rood or half a rood of wheat. If that does not happen, I am very doubtful that we will get the required amount of wheat this year, or anything like it.

There are farmers who have gone out of their way to provide the country's requirements of wheat, because they believe that it is their duty to do so. But there are others who, rather than plough their own land, went out and took the land of people who were not in a position to till it. These people had let their machinery go, and simply set their land, and the farmers to whom I have referred, who did not wish to plough up their own farms, took that land and tilled it merely for the purpose of fulfilling their obligations. It will not produce anything like the same amount of wheat as their own land, but those people prefer to do that rather than take the chance of doing what they believe would be an injury to their own land. One man whom I have in mind had land which would probably produce three barrels of wheat to every one barrel which myself or other people around me could produce.

That spirit prevails all over the country. From all parts of Ireland, I hear of people who have the type of land which has not been used for probably 50 or 60 years, and which has the necessary fertility to produce the wheat we require for our people. A lot of those farmers are the very people who expect the younger men in the country to join the Defence Forces and, if necessary, to sacrifice their lives, but they themselves are not prepared to till their land. I am sure Senator McGee and other people here will agree that wheat does not do the amount of harm that it is alleged to do the land, and that many people have grown wheat successfully and have their lands still in good fettle. Some people, however, have the idea that a wheat crop injures their land, and they are determined to take no risk.

I would even argue that even if it did the harm to the land that some people allege it does, it is the duty of these people to the country to grow wheat this year and next. That is why I put down this amendment. I am in favour of the motion, and I agree with a good deal of what Senator The McGillycuddy has said. I agree with the provision of a proper price, because if you are to grow wheat or anything else, you will have to get an economic price in order to keep people in employment and to keep men on the land. I realise that from the State point of view there are difficulties in providing money, but the position is that it has got to be done, and it has to be done in the years ahead. I want to see that everyone has to toe the line in this matter, and that we will not have a position in which— as anyone who has been through the national movement will agree is often to be found — people will turn away, will turn their backs when they are required to do anything for the country, but will turn up when there is anything going. I want to make these people toe the line and to do their duty.

Mr. O'Dwyer

I second the amendment.

Sir John Keane

When we had a debate of a similar character some time ago, the mover of this motion, without any justification, on the basis of a private conversation, said that I always opposed him on grounds totally lacking in principle. In fact, he went on to say that my action in opposing him was unprincipled.

The McGillycuddy

May I interrupt the Senator? I was entirely wrong in what I said on that occasion. I think I was carried away by what I might call alliterative exuberance. I did not mean to imply that the Senator was in any way unprincipled, and I am quite prepared to withdraw that.

Sir John Keane

The Senator and I are very good friends, and there was a playful element behind this. I accept in full measure the withdrawal he has made. I cannot agree with him, fully at any rate, on the terms of this motion, and I think I should state, or try to state, perhaps, on what my opinion is based. The present times are entirely abnormal, and I think it would be very unwise to make the present conditions a basis for future policy. We cannot dissociate ourselves from the whole of the world movement.

I think we should go so far, even in this small island, as to have regard to the Atlantic Charter, which in particular suggests that it is all these national barriers and artificial restrictions that are the root cause of the present world conflict, and if the world is ever to get back to a policy of sanity, it must aim at a much freer movement of goods and commodities between countries. While this doctrine of self-sufficiency is very useful, and indeed very necessary, in time of war, if all countries continue to perpetuate it, we will find what we call the peace when it does come will only be a breathing space before the next war. Working on that principle of access to raw materials and freedom of world trade, I feel that the future of the world and of this country will to a large extent be determined.

I feel it is a great mistake to commit ourselves to the future by any artificial conditions that prevail to-day. This high price of wheat necessary now imposes a very considerable burden on the taxpayer, and surely the time will come when we will try to relieve the burden of taxation and get back to a far greater degree of economic freedom and to conditions which are the basis of economic reality and not to conditions of scarcity. I am fully in sympathy with Senator Byrne in the desire to encourage tillage in the country and that agriculture should always be our primary consideration, but let us be quite clear about this. There is enormous scope in agriculture for improved technique, and the more you protect agriculture by means of artifice and artificial prices, the more you are diverting the urge which is necessary for these improved methods. I do not mention this in any sense as a derogatory comparison between our country and others, but put yourself this question: if, by some occult process, you could substitute Dane for Irish, sex for sex on the land of this country, does anyone deny that there would be a transformation in agriculture in five years?

We have to face that challenge. The Danes have brought agricultural technique to a much higher plane than we have. Until we realise that and improve our technique in the agricultural field and operate similar methods to the Danes, we can never hope to see agriculture in the healthy position it should be in. There will always be the tendency to go crying to Governments for protection and prices, artificial aids of every kind.

It is a most cultured phrase but, to the ordinary agriculturist, it is a sickening delusion. "Money makes the mare go" and it is very hard to get farmers to take on all the new technique that time prescribes when rates and taxes are taken from them whatever livelihood they possess. Somebody suggested that the farmers let the people down and Senator Sir John Keane suggested that, if we transplanted the Danes to Ireland, they would get more out of the farms and the farm labourers than we were getting. History shows that, whenever they have gone to foreign parts, in times of peace or war, the courage, determination and grit of the sons of our Irish farmers and farm labourers have been second to none, England not excluded. If we look back over the history of the past 50 years — we do not need to read to learn it — we must admit that the farmers have had many knocks and the labourers, too. Yet, they have maintained a great deal of which this nation has every right to be proud. In these busy days, if you go down the country, you will find that, after hours of very hard work, the farmers and farm labourers are answering loyally every call that the Christian Church brings to them. When I hear that the farmers "let the country down", I look around and everywhere I see monuments to their Christian Church and faith. Those are to be found in more churches than one but, principally, in the Catholic Church, showing that, out of their poor resources, they have never failed to contribute. Every parish bears that out. Every ship that ever left Ireland with emigrants carried a farmer's son or daughter who maintained that principle abroad. They are people of whom we should be proud. If the farmers are accused of "letting the people down" in this island home of ours in the past two years, it is because the farmers have found that there has been nothing for themselves for the past 50 years and that they themselves have been "let down".

As regards wheat growing, I was considering in 1932 where I was going to stand. Several of my friends around me at home and on my council and county committee were doing the same thing. The wheat-growing campaign was inaugurated. A committee was appointed and I examined the findings of that committee. So far as they went, they appeared sound and sensible. Although I differed widely from the political Party responsible, I had no hesitation in saying that, so far as it went, it was a wise and prudent move.

I went into it so far as my moderate means would allow, and I do not think that any supporter of the Government went farther. My reason was that I had been keeping balance sheets and, for years, I could see where I was slipping. In the scheme then placed before the country, I saw that the whole economy of the nation could be fairly adjusted as between the agricultural, or producing, community, on the one hand, and the urban, or consuming community, on the other hand. If wheat were a paying proposition, it appeared to me that it would maintain the farmer and would give the labourer something like a living wage. It was easy to balance it because it called for a sacrifice, on the one hand, to make up for the advantages the offer possessed. I have seen it grow for a year or two and I found that when your land was fresh and vigorous and new, it gave a crop from which you could anticipate a fairly good return, one out of which you could make a living and which would permit your labourer to live and would be an encouragement to you.

Time went on. The year 1936 gave an exceedingly poor return in my part of the country. I found that there were some costings coming in then that needed national investigation. At that time it was felt by many of us that the agricultural industry should be looked after, particularly in relation to wheat growing, in exactly the same way as the Government looked after the various factories it had successfully established. The Government should see that a decent livelihood is provided for the men working on the land and that there is a dividend to pay out to the owner of the land for the capital he had invested in it. These circumstances lacking, as they have been, I do not know that it is quite right to blame any member of the community for not going into wheat growing or into tillage with the enthusiasm that the nation now, in this hour of crisis, expects, demands and prosecutes and persecutes farmers for not showing.

My friend, Senator Sir John Keane, suggests we should not base our future economy on the present emergency. To some extent, he is right, but if exceptional steps require to be taken by any section of the community, why should they be sacrificed for other sections unless the taxpayer is expected to toe the line? When, therefore, I hear of farmers evading and avoiding tillage, perhaps because their means do not warrant it, I think it should be made perfectly clear that it is expected that the taxpayers will recoup these people for the losses that they envisage and in some cases only too correctly envisage.

Towards the end of last January 1 was fortunate enough to be one of a deputation which met the Minister and the Taoiseach. The costs of production, as far as they could be obtained by me and others, were then minutely examined, and 50/- was suggested as the minimum price which would give some encouragement to the farmers and give anything like a reasonably increased acreage of tillage. I myself furnished figures, and it was pointed out that since the inception of the present wheat-growing scheme, every possible obstacle was placed or came in the way of other branches of farming. The economic war ruined the cattle trade and many in it. Just when the economic war was over, the foot-and-mouth disease came along as a further curse. Despite the effect of all the platform propaganda that was then ruling in the land, nothing like the acreage required was ever attained. It could not be hoped for after these eight or ten years if something drastic in the way of price encouragement was not immediately attempted. Soon afterwards a price of 50/- was announced. I think that anyone with his ear to the ground in the country will admit that the end justified the means. A considerably increased acreage was immediately obtained. So far so good. Generally speaking, the promise of a satisfactory result has some foundation. I do not know what southern Ireland has had, but we have had some glorious rain, thank God, in my part of the country; but to state that the nation has reached the stage of independence, relying on its own produce alone, would be futile. It is admitted that it has not. It is hoped that a further effort will be made, but I am proud to be associated with Senator The McGillycuddy and Senator Crosbie. I was particularly pleased to read Senator Crosbie made some suggestion to the Minister, and I hope that as a result of this, and of our motion tonight, some arrangement will be arrived at. I understand that it was agreed to adjourn at 7 o'clock.

Seanad Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 20 May 1942