It may be as well for me to intervene in this debate, if I may, at an early stage, because on the principle underlying this motion I take a very strong view. I shall never be party to the proposition that the farmers of this country should be turned into paupers by a Government proposal to pay them for keeping a good cow, and I do not believe the farmers will ever desire an Irish Government to do that to them. I have always believed that every section of the community in this country, professional men, business men, labourers and everybody else in the last analysis depend on the farmers for their livelihood. If the farmers have a decent livelihood the rest of the community prosper; if the farmers cannot get a decent livelihood the rest of the community will go bust.
Senator McGee has referred, in passing, to the economic war. Nobody will ever be able to reckon the devastation that was wrought on the best working farmers in this country by the economic war. They suffered in silence and many of them were ruined by the economic war to a degree from which they have never been able to recover. That is past history and it is our job now, in so far as we can, to repair the ravages of that disaster and restore the agricultural community to the road to progress and prosperity which they are well able to travel if only their neighbours would get out of their way.
Let us consider what this motion proposes—that we should pay the farmer to retain on his land a cow that will yield 10.741 pounds of milk in a lactation period. At present, butter fat values return £47 10s. 0d., there is £6 18s. 11d. for the skimmed milk and the price of the calf—call it £55. Why should the Government pay a man for retaining on his land a cow that is going to pay £55 in preference to a cow that is going to pay £20? What farmer in this country wants to be paid to keep a good cow in preference to a bad cow? I never met him, but if there are any such, the sooner they cease to be farmers the better it will be for themselves and for the country.
I can readily understand the Senator's anxiety to see energetic measures taken to increase the average milk yield of the dairy cattle of this country. I entirely agree with him that energetic measures to that end are urgently required, and they are going to be taken right here and now, not by coercion, not by sending out another horde of inspectors, but by placing at the disposal of the farmers of this country the means of securing milk yields. I will stake my reputation on it that, by putting within the reach of our farmers the means of doing that, this Government will achieve more in two years than 15 years of inspectors have done for the milk yields of this country.
What requires to be done to improve milk yields? It is not necessary to change the whole basis of our live-stock industry in order to secure satisfactory milk yields from the dairy stock of this country. I believe that the Shorthorn breed is the foundation of our whole live-stock economy, and I believe that, as an economic milk producer, the Shorthorn breed will hold its own against any other breed. I am not prepared to maintain that, if average volume be the sole criterion of a breed's excellence, the Shorthorn breed will excel all other breeds, but I think it is true, and I believe will be demonstrated in the course of the next few years, that as a profit-making producer the Shorthorn breed can hold its own with any other breed known in this country.
If we want to get from the Shorthorn breed, or from any other breed, the maximum yield of milk that is economic —remember milk yields can be pushed to fantastic heights by artificial feeding programmes which are far from economic—if we want to push milk yields to the highest economic level, the first instrument to employ is grass, and the first and most urgent improvement in grassland management in this country is to extend the period in the year during which fresh herbage is available from our pastures and the aftergrass of our meadows. One of the blights under which agriculture has suffered in this country for many years is the ignorant superstition, so widespread in certain circles, that grass is a kind of weed and that to have grass on your land is a sort of reflection on the farmer who has it about his place. I want to say this, that in my judgment the most valuable crop that can be grown in this country can be grass, if it were properly grown. It is the farmers who look on grass as a casual weed who are justified in despising it, because they are despising something which when treated like a weed acts like a weed; but they should, instead of despising the grass that they have suffered to degenerate in their keeping, hang their heads for shame of their ignorance rather than join in the raucous rubbish about ranchers and the like.
If they would but till their land and sow their grass seeds with the same care and discrimination that they profess to exercise in the selection of cereals for sowing, they would discover that, instead of having grass from May till September, they could have grass from March till October. They would discover, too, that the cheapest method of producing milk is the feeding of cattle in their full lactation on the growing grass, and that the man who is concerned primarily to supply co-operative creameries might be very well advised to produce all his milk with grass, and to concern himself very little with any effort to feed his cattle with concentrates designed to increase milk yields in winter.
A different story must be told of the man whose prime concern is to maintain an all-the-year-round supply of liquid milk and desires to sell the milk in that form to consumers. It is of the very nature of his business that he must seek to maintain his milk yield winter and summer, and with prudent discrimination he will seek to produce the milk that pays him best, in winter by the use of suitable feeding, and in summer by the provision of the fodder which his growing grass provides.
But grass has another use which some day our people will wake up to understand. Grass as an article for ensilage can be converted into one of the most useful and nutritious winter feeds that money can buy. It is only when it is extensively used for that purpose, in addition to being used for grazing and for hay in suitable circumstances, that we can say that an exhaustive use is being made of our own resources for the production of milk.
I say that measures are being taken, and are going to be taken now, to realise these objectives, not by coercion but by placing within the farmer's reach the means of doing it. I hope, within the next few months, to have a general survey made of the grassland of this country by one of the greatest authorities, I think, in the world on practical grassland management. If it should be possible, I hope in time to have at the disposal of our Government as adviser on grassland maintenance a man whose reputation has established him as a great practical authority, and the result of whose work is not only contained between the covers of a book but in successful results on the practical demonstration of his own knowledge in his own country. The Government propose, in the course of this year, to establish at Johnstown a soil science research institute and a plant breeding institute which, I hope, will yet be, if not the first, amongst the first, of such institutes in the world. If we think of competing with wealthy countries in material achievement we are foredoomed to failure, but in the realm of science, of learning and of skill we are more than a match for most competitors, and at least the equal of all. Soil science and plant culture are two matters in which I believe we have as fine workers as there are in any country in the world. It is the intention of the Government to place at the disposal of these workers facilities equal to those available to workers in other learned institutions throughout the world. I will stake my reputation that, given the same facilities, our men will bring those interested in these sciences from all parts of the world to study, in our country, how soil science, the management of soil, the management of plants and the development of grasslands can best be done.
The Government have already taken steps, and the plants will shortly be in operation, to produce ground limestone in abundant quantities for those who wish to buy it. It is not the intention to break down any man's gate and pile ground limestone on his land, whether he likes it or not. Fixity of tenure in this country of ours, as far as I understand it, means that you can throw the landlord's bailiff out if he tries to come in. I should like to see established in this country the right to throw anyone off the land if he tries to break in but I should also like to see the Department of Agriculture in this country developed into such an institution that every farmer in this country, whenever he encounters difficulty or perplexity or embarrassment, would think that he has a department to which he can turn with confidence in the certain knowledge that if it is humanly possible they would consider it a privilege to come to his aid. And in that spirit we are providing the ground limestone. No one need buy it if they do not want it, but we will explain the value of it to the land for which those farmers are in some sense trustees. And again I stake my reputation that where it is required there will be nobody more eager to buy and spread it than those who own the land of Ireland. I hope to see it costing about 16/- per ton at the quarry. I hope to see a service available of which every farmer can take advantage if he wishes, but he need not if he does not want to, to have the ground limestone brought to his land and distributed by efficient distributors for a small additional charge. Some men will wish to avail of that. Others will prefer to send their own carts and spread it in their own way. I know that old practitioners will decry my indiscretion in speaking frankly and openly of the plans we have and of our confident hopes. If anything goes agley I have left myself open to gibes and jeers in opening my mouth but I do not give a fiddle-de-dee. These are the things I do hope now. These are the things I believe we can perform. Maybe I am wrong but I am staking my reputation in our ability to do these things and I know we mean to do them.
The next measure, once the grasslands of this country have been raised to the highest pitch of production by suitable manure, by the application of lime, by prudent rotation of tillage and re-seeding where it is necessary, and by a prudent system of grazing designed to apply cheap nitrogen to the soil, is to ensure a supply of the best dairy bulls money can buy, and it is the intention of the Government to buy them wherever they can be got—Scotland, England, the North of Ireland, Ballsbridge or Ballydehob. It is by no means certain that the only place you can get a good bull is Perth or Ballsbridge. If it costs money to get them, I think money so spent is the best of all investments. We will buy a few duds, by mistake, because there never was a man yet who dealt in live stock, whether it be horses or cattle, who in the course of his career did not get a few duds, but it will not be for want of skill or experience, because we have some of the finest authorities on live stock in the world in the Irish Department of Agriculture. Do not doubt that. If it is not known at home, it is known abroad, where their opinions are universally sought when great sums are spent. I have every confidence that the public servants at the disposal of this State will make as good a job as any body of men in buying for our people the stock that we require, and in my opinion the best to acquire is the double dairy Shorthorn bull.
There is one feature of all these figures that has been a perennial puzzle to me and that is the unpopularity of cow-testing. Why is it that the farmers of this country are so slow consistently to practise cow-testing? If any Senator here can propose to me a practicable method of popularising cow-testing in this country I shall be greatly indebted to him. It is common knowledge, among all of us who have any experience of milch cattle, that one is most easily deceived by that type of cow which shortly after calving produces an astounding abundance of milk. I believe in the science of psychology; it is a well-known fact that one insensibly remembers the happy experiences of life and thrusts into the subconscious the less agreeable experiences one may have to pass through. The cow-owning farmers are marvellous exponents of that psychological phenomenon. For the first month the cow fills the bucket and then falls away. Most farmers of this country love to remember the first month and some of my acquaintances on being induced to join a cow-testing association were surprised when it was revealed by the test that some of the sedate old ladies who kept to the middle of the road were really the money-spinners whereas the charming queens who began with histrionics ended up by being nothing but a burden on their owners. Some of them were so resentful of that revelation that they left the cow-testing association. They felt it was a kind of reflection on themselves.
That is common knowledge in many parts of the country and it is something that is a real hindrance to the development of deep-yielding cows of this country. Mind you, I am not saying this in a spirit of derision, because I am obliged to confess that it is in some measure spoken from experience. You do get an idea about your own cattle and it is a bit of a shock after the acid proof of test is administered that your own opinions about your own cattle are fallacious. I think most experienced farmers will agree with me that it is extremely easy to estimate wrongly the milk-producing capacity of your own cow and there is no means of correcting that false estimate except to submit to cow-testing. Anything that my Department can do to promote cow-testing societies in this country and to induce farmers to join them and stay in them we will most happily do. I think it is worth mentioning that whereas in the past the view was held that anything less than a weekly weighing of milk would make cow-testing illusory that view no longer holds. I understand it is pretty general belief that a monthly weighing will give a very valuable indication, perhaps not quite so precise but quite precise enough for all ordinary purposes of a cow's capacity for milk and this fact may help to remove some of the prejudices that at present exist against cow-testing.
I have said that I have regarded Shorthorn cattle as the basis of our whole live-stock industry and that I believe it and will continue to hold that belief until the reverse can be established. I am prepared to make this admission that if the dairy farmers of this country can establish that they are being urged to retain a breed of cattle which over the average is yielding a lesser milk supply than some other breed which is available to them and that they are being urged to do this in order to avoid irretrievable injury to the live-stock industry or the drystock industry I think the case could be made for the proposition that the dairying industry in which the farmers engage was entitled to some consideration from their fellow-farmers who depend upon drystock for their income. I doubt if when the investigation is made that a case could be established. I certainly would not undertake to establish it but if it were established that the farmer for the same quantity of foodstuff could produce from a Friesian cow 700 gallons and from a Shorthorn cow only 500 gallons and a calf I would be prepared to admit that a case which would seem to me irresistible could be made for paying the farmer to keep a Shorthorn cow for the public good the value of the 700 gallons of milk for the 500 gallons and the calf. Mind you, if and when the reckoning is made, I doubt very much that it can be established before any reasonable body of impartial men or women that the differential between the average yield of dairy Shorthorn cows, bearing in mind that that yield consists of a calf and milk, is substantially inferior in value to the yield of a Jersey, a Guernsey or a Friesian, if you take her milk and her calf into the counting.
I think I have said all that I can profitably say on this motion, but I would like to end as I began. If the day ever comes when the farmers of this country have to be paid to keep a good cow, then, as Senator McGee indicated, this country will be bust wide open. I do not believe that day will ever come. God forbid that any Minister for Agriculture in this country, for political reasons, publicity reasons or popularity reasons, would ever stoop to make paupers of the farmers of Ireland. I never will, in any case, and so long as I am where I am the Government of this country will not be asked to pay any farmer to keep a good cow. But, without having recourse to that device, I hope that my Department in the course of the next two or three years will have completed a programme which will place it within the reach of every farmer to get the highest yield per cow out of every cow in Ireland that could be got out of any cow in any country, and without compelling one single one of them to employ or purchase anything, I dare to prophesy that the resources placed at their disposal will be availed of and that the necessity of discussing inadequate milk yields will rarely if ever arise again in this Seanad.