It is, perhaps, appropriate that a motion such as this, which aims at promoting an increase in our agricultural output, should be taken immediately after the Bill which has been debated for the past two days. We have been discussing the advisability of seeking ways and means of improving our external trade balance, and I think it will be accepted that there is no more effective means by which we can accomplish this than by increasing our agricultural output.
I welcome the Minister's presence here to-day. I should like to take the opportunity of making a personal apology to him for an incident which happened on the last occasion here. It will be remembered that the Minister left rather abruptly at the opening of my speech. He evidently left because of something which he thought I was about to say. I now sincerely apologise for whatever it was he thought I was about to say.
Those of us who represent the agricultural community listened to-day with some resentment to a statement made on the other side of the House that more stern measures should be taken with the farmers and the agricultural community. I should imagine that all sections of the community at the present time realise that the farming community—I mean both farmers and workers—are doing their best under difficult circumstances, contributing their best to the nation and contributing it for a declining reward. Over the past few months, there has been a persistent campaign to convince public opinion that the farmer is securing an excessive reward for his services to the community and is making an inadequate contribution to the general welfare and to the pool of national output.
It is right and desirable that that campaign should be nipped in the bud. The latest figures at my disposal— those for February—show that, while the agricultural price index stood at 333 in February, 1955, it fell to 311 in February, 1956. That is a substantial decline in the remuneration of the entire farming community. When we come up against a campaign of this nature, it is right to point out that there is a grave misconception in regard to the agricultural income and, in particular, to the income of individual farmers. It is necessary to point this out because we are being told that there is no use in doing anything for farmers, that they are already too well off, and, because they are too well off, they are sitting down and doing nothing.
I admit it is difficult to secure a really accurate figure of the income of farmers. There is a total figure— called in statistics the "net income"—of £114,000,000. This only includes outlay on machinery and fertilisers and does not include labour, so that it is not really the true figure of net income. Some time ago an investigation was held in Scotland to ascertain the net income in respect of a number of farms. From the information I have, those farms appear to have been intensively worked. The investigation was held by the Edinburgh and East Scotland College of Agriculture and it applied to four different types of farms: arable, dairy, pig and poultry holdings and market gardening holdings.
The significant thing is that this survey shows that, in the arable group of farms, the net income was £9 per acre, and this was in respect of East Scotland where prices are considerably higher than they are here. In the case of the dairy farms, the average net income was £6 per acre, notwithstanding the fact that the gross output per acre amounted to £34 in the case of the arable group and to £43 in the case of the dairying group. This showed that, although the farms were reasonably intensively worked, they produced a net income of only £9 per acre in one case and £6 per acre in the other case. We can gather from those figures what the net income of a 30 or 40 acre farm would be. It is no harm to have those figures in mind when people are inclined to suggest that the farmers are excessively rewarded for their services.
The purpose of this debate is to endeavour to establish the urgent need for increased agricultural output. It will be accepted on every side of the House that an increase in our agricultural output is desirable and it will also be accepted that it is possible. When a thing is possible and desirable, we ought all to bend our energies towards achieving it. The average net output of agriculture stood at 112 in 1945; it is 109 to-day. That means that over a period of ten years, when great efforts were made in every direction to intensify farming, the total net output of agriculture declined by three points.
I do not want to dwell too long upon these statistics, nor do I want to go into the points discussed by the Minister elsewhere as to whether those statistics are reliable or not. We have the figures supplied to us in the Irish Statistical Survey by the Bureau of Statistics and, whether we like them or not, we have got to accept those figures. The Minister often reminds me of one of those enthusiastic sportsmen who frantically applaud the referee when he gives a decision in favour of the enthusiast's own side, but is quite prepared to boo the referee off the field when he gives a decision in favour of the other side. The Minister has been rather severe upon the manner in which these statistics are compiled, though, on occasion, he has used these statistics in an attempt to show that progress has been made under his administration.
Now, he cannot have it both ways: he must either disagree completely with the official statistics or he must accept them completely. I, as a farmer, knowing how these statistics are prepared and everything about them, am not absolutely convinced of their accuracy but I think they are reasonably accurate and that they, at any rate, show existing trends. The trend they show at the moment is that, over the years since 1945, irrespective of a slight rise or a slight fall, there certainly has not been the significant increase in output that there should have been. There is no use in quarrelling about one or two points in the index. What we should be concerned about is the fact that there has not been an increase of 30 per cent., 40 per cent. or 50 per cent. in the total net output, the increase that could have been achieved and that has been achieved in other countries.
I hope I shall approach this matter in a constructive way and, approaching it in a constructive way, I want to set out now as clearly as possible the suggestions I have to make in order to bring about increased agricultural output. I will give them in what I consider to be their order of importance. First, we must establish a real agricultural council and not merely a hole-and-corner consultative council which the Minister may convene at his own convenience and which is not generally recognised; secondly, we must increase the use of fertilisers enormously; thirdly, we must ensure that, for the key products in intensive farming, there shall be a secure market and a guaranteed price; fourthly, credit facilities must be very substantially increased and improved for the ordinary farmer; and fifthly, our entire agricultural, educational and research services must be drastically and completely overhauled. Though I put that last, it is not the least important.
These are the five points I want the Minister and the House to consider as absolutely essential in order to bring about an increased agricultural output, so essential if we are to preserve our present standard of living and hold even our existing population and prevent the country from becoming the laughing stock of Europe. In this State, we have 15,000,000 acres of land, 12,000,000 acres of which is good agricultural land. In other words, we have five acres per head of the population and 25 acres per family of five persons. If this nation, with those resources, were to go bankrupt, we would appear despicable in the eyes of the entire world. If a member of this House were to meet a farmer on the street who asked him for the price of his supper and who told him that he was a poor man with a wife and three children and 25 acres of land, I wonder would that Senator be moved to compassion.
If we cannot make a living for our people out of these resources, then we are not fit to enjoy the independence we have. I suggest that, in setting up an agricultural council, we would be to a considerable extent lifting agriculture out of the more embittered type of Party politics. I do not hold the view that agricultural policy should not be the function of the Oireachtas. I do not hold the view that it should not be the duty of the Government to make decisions on agricultural policy and, since it is the duty of the Government to make decisions on agricultural policy, it is essential that such policy should be discussed here and in the Dáil. We would like, however, to get away from the shallow, barren, futile type of discussion in which one Minister blames another for conditions over which the other Minister had no control and in which one Minister claims credit for achievements with regard to which he had nothing whatever to do. If we can get away from that type of discussion, we will go a long way towards evolving a better agricultural policy.
One of the advantages of having a vocationally elected agricultural council is that the people who constitute that council—representatives of the farmers' associations and representatives of the workers; if organised, the workers would be entitled to representation—would go in prepared to discuss matters not from the point of view of Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael, but from the point of view of agriculture. They might differ and they might have violent discussion, but discussion would not be directed along the lines of purely Party conflict. In establishing such a council, therefore, we would lift agriculture away from the barren and futile type of discussion which we have so frequently had in relation to agriculture in the past.
That council would provide for representation of every truly representative vocational agricultural organisation. Tests, of course, would have to be applied, but that would not be an insurmountable difficulty. Such a council would be an even better way of dealing with this matter rather than following the precedent in Great Britain where the Government meet the representatives of the National Farmers' Union because, on the council I suggest, there would be representation of both the agricultural organisations and the agricultural workers themselves. Such a council is, of course, only the first step towards the evolving of a better and more effective agricultural policy.
The second point in the programme which I have outlined is that we must encourage the use of fertilisers. Increased output in agriculture is like increased output in any other industry. It depends upon the amount of raw materials you put into the industry. The output of a factory depends to a great extent upon the input of raw material. Fertilisers are one of the essential raw materials of agriculture and a very important essential, because even relatively good land, or what appears to be relatively good land, has shown that it will produce absolutely worthless crops, if some particular chemical element is missing, so that, until all the various chemical elements required are put into the land, we cannot expect to get from the land the output that is desirable.
In this connection, it is almost startling to realise how low we are on the list of fertiliser-using nations. It is hard to believe that a nation with our reputation for education and intelligence, with our reputation for producing the best agricultural scientists in the world, could fall so low in regard to the consumption of fertilisers. I have figures showing the consumption of fertilisers in European countries for the year 1954-55 and the figures I am giving are tons per 1,000 acres of arable land.