Professor Johnston: We are all here to co-operate with the Government in power, whatever part we may individually have played in the election that preceded the accession to power of the present Government. In that respect every Senator is conscious of a common duty. The question, as I see it, before the House is how best we may perfect the machinery of co-operation between the Seanad and the Government. One idea which is supposed to he embodied in this House is vocational representation, and one idea associated with that representation is that expert minds, free from political or partisan bias, should give of their best in service by way of advice to the Government for the time being iii power.

Therefore, if we can in any way develop the vocational agricultural element that exists in this House, strengthen and develop it, it may form the nucleus of a permanent consultative council to give advice to the Minister for Agriculture. Along such lines we may he able to arrive at some commonly agreed solution.

Meanwhile, I deprecate any attempt to curtail or restrict discussion of this motion. In my opinion, Senator Baxter's motion is as good a peg on which we can hang a discussion of these important matters as any other would be. In any case, it is part of the privilege of a democracy to have a full and free discussion preceding a decision. By all means, let us have that free and full discussion.

Now, I take it that if I can make prima facie case that agriculture requires special expert advice, and that some special machinery should be created with a view to giving that advice continuously, I will have fulfilled all the purposes of this motion, and that it will be quite, unnecessary for me to travel in detail over the whole subject of agriculture however much I might he tempted to do so.

Agriculture at the present time is engaged in licking its wounds after the battle, and it is, I think, in order that I should attempt to analyse the extent and the seriousness of those wounds. The evidence from official statistics and other sources of agricultural decay in the last few years are, I think, quite incontrovertible. Whether we take it from the point of view of diminution in gross output or diminution in net output, there is no doubt whatever that our agricultural industry has passed through a most serious and difficult time.

We know from official sources that gross output is down by more than £20,000,000 per year from the very inadequate total it had reached some ten or 12 years ago. In terms of net output, the loss is not quite so serious. To express it in a way that will bring it home more clearly to those of us who are not agriculturists, I shall put it this way: my calculations, based on official statistics, show that the average remuneration of the 650,000 persons occupied in agriculture -- farmers and labourers -- in 1926-7 amounted in money, or money's worth, to £88 per annum.

That is to say, the average remuneration of the 625,000 persons occupied in agriculture amounted to £88 per annum 12 years ago. Between 1932 and 1936, that average remuneration amounted, if my calculations are right, to not more than £60 per annum, the equivalent of an income tax -- although most. of that money went to waste and did not enrich the national.revenue -- of more than 25% on persons occupied in agricultural production. That is a serious economic loss to the interests concerned.

It is, I think, commonly agreed amongst experts that the primary object of our agriculture is the production of livestock and livestock products. At all events, 86% of the gross output of our agriculture in 1926 and in 1929 was represented by livestock and livestock products. The chief raw material or the production of such products is grass and we have to thank a bountiful Providence for providing us so liberally with so admirable a raw material for the production of live stock and livestock products.

In addition to the grass which nature provides and which we have done something, but not enough, to make effective use of, we also need to feed our animals and birds in winter time. We feed them partly with the products of our own arable cultivation, whether produced on the farms on which they are used, or on neighbouring farms, and partly with cereal products which we import. We may regard those cereal products as, in a real sense, the raw materials of the most important of our agricultural activities; in essentially the same way as raw cotton is the raw material of the cotton industry of Lancashire.

Some time ago, I had the curiosity to work out in terms of cereal equivalent the import of maize and its products, plus the home production of roots for animal feeding, plus the home production of barley and oats -- what they all amounted to in terms of cereal equivalent, expressing roots as cereal equivalent by dividing the weight of the produce by about 12.

Expressed in that form, I found that, in 1927, we were using about 35,000,000 cwt of cereal-equivalent raw materials in our animal husbandry, whereas, in 1936, that consumption of raw material had fallen to 24,000,000 cwts. That is, I think, important evidence of the decay of the chief aspect of our agricultural activity. All you can tell me with reference to the increase, mean- while, in production of beet and in the by-products of wheat production will not convince me that the whole of that gap between 35,000,000 cwts. and 24,000,000 cwts. of cereal-equivalent has been bridged.

Another important aspect of livestock agriculture in the feeding of an adequate protein ration to animals, especially in the winter time, when grass is inadequate for their complete nourishment. Protein in the form of one other of the oil seed cakes is one of the agricultural raw materials we simply must import. Therefore, the annual import of oilseed cake raw material is an admirable index of the extent to which we are using this necessary protein ingredient in out ration. In 1927 we imported 1,000,000 cwt of oilseed cake and meal, and, in 1931, we imported 1,136,000 cwts. of oil seed cake and meal. In 1936, we imported 429,000 cwts. of that most necessary raw material. The importance of that is not only with reference to the weight and quality added to the animals which are fed that ration but also with reference to the fertility of the soil, which is preserved by properly feeding the live stock which graze on that soil.

I should not he the least surprised to find that, owing to the inadequate feeding of our live stock for the last few years, the fertility of the soil, so far from being enriched, has steadily deteriorated. That is evidence of a serious development in our agricultural situation requiring the attention of some body specially qualified to investigate it.

Grass is our greatest natural resource, and basic slag is one of the most important of grass manures. In 1927, we imported 28,000 tons of basic slag. In 1934, we imported none at all, and, in 1936, we imported 15,000 tons. I submit that that is evidence of neglect of one of our most important assets.

I hope I shall not he detaining the House too long if I briefly refer to one or two other aspects of this question. I should like, as far as possible, to avoid any partisan approach to it because, if any useful purpose is to be served, it will require the co-operation of persons on both sides of this House. I hope that nothing i shall say, or have said, will he regarded as in any way an attempt to make capital for any political party. After all, the election is now over and any capital I make now will be exhausted before the next election.

One of the features of the regrettable economic strife of the last six years, which have been inadequately realised, is the extent to which the Government, by its policy, was able, so to speak, to temper the wind to the shorn lamb and to neutralise the effect of the economic war on such sections of the agricultural interest as, for its own reasons, it wished to protect from the full effect of that strife. One way of estimating that is to compare the yield of the British taxes on specific exports of ours with the amount spent by us, in the way of bounty or subsidy, to neutralise the effect of the British taxes on the prices of these particular commodities.

The most striking thing we see when we look into the matter in this way is that by far the most remunerative source of taxation to the British tax-collector was the tax on our cattle. In 1935 the British collected £2,500,000 on cattle which we sent out, and the amount of bounty paid on this side in respect of these cattle exports was only £297,000, so that we may truthfully say that the cattle industry was allowed to bear its full share, and more than its its share, of the brunt of that economic east wind.

On the other hand, when we come to eggs and dairy produce, we find that, in 1934, the United Kingdom tax on eggs amounted to £300,000, while the bounty we paid on the export of eggs in that year was £487,000. In other words, we were paying more in bounty in respect of egg exports than the British collected in tax. The effect of that was that the burden of the economic war, so far as the egg producer was concerned, was completely lifted from his shoulders and transferred to those of the taxpayer and general consumer in this country.

The extreme instance of the lifting of the burden is of course, the treatment of the dairy industry. In 1934-35 the British collected £444,000 from our dairy exports, and, in the corresponding year, we paid in bounty and subsidy something like £2,000,000, so that the dairy industry during this last six-year period was able to command a higher price for its products than it would have commanded if there had been no economic war and no bounty or subsidy.

The important fact that emerges from that is that the economic war and the hand-to-mouth policy adopted from time to time in dealing with that war must have had a certain effect in distorting our agricultural economy from the form it would otherwise have occupied.

Whether that distortion was intentional or not I do not know. At all events, it did distort it, and the fact of that distortion and the general tendency resulting from that distortion is one of the things which I should like some such expert body as this council to consider very carefully in the most impartial manner possible.

Perhaps the chief argument in favour of the setting up of some such body is that in 1932, when the economic war broke out -- it was in the summer month, July -- all the large farmers were fully stocked with the kind of cattle they buy with a view to fattening and subsequent sale. Consequently, many of these large farmers must have individually lost thousands of pounds. They were caught full of stock at a time when stock suddenly depreciated in value.

In the year and month when the economic war suddenly came to an end -- it was an early month, in Spring -- owing to various reasons, it was not possible for large farmers to be fully stocked up. Consequently, they were caught short of stock at a time when stock was due for a sudden increase in value.

The shock of the settlement of the economic war has, therefore, in a way, been nearly as disastrous to certain sections of the agricultural industry as the original shock of the outbreak of the war was, because those people who, if they are able to maximise production -- it is our interest and the national interest that they should do so -- will have to be in a position to increase to full capacity the stock they carry on their land, now find that that stock is going to cost them far more money than it would have cost them if the economic war had continued.

That is the principal reason why liberal credit facilities should be made available for such farmers as find it impossible to stock their land, because the value of cattle has increased in consequence of the settlement.

There are other problems which cannot be suitably considered in an Assembly like this but which would be most appropriate for consideration by the kind of body I have in view. For example, as you all know, the British pay a subsidy varying from two (shillings) and six (pence) to seven and six per hundredweight on fat cattle, with the proviso that the subsidy is less in the case of cattle imported from here and is non-existent in the case of cattle which do not remain at least three months in that country -- England.

The effect of that subsidy on their fat cattle seems to me to make it possible for their fatteners and finishers of cattle to bid up the price of our young stock above a figure at which our fatteners and finishers of cattle can compete. In the result, our farmers, who would normally be fattening and finishing cattle, find themselves unable to buy the raw material for that purpose because the British subsidy raises the cost of the raw material above the level which would he profitable to them.

Here, I speak subject to correction, and I would like this aspect of the matter to he examined by a competent body. If the matter is as I suspect it is, it is one which might well engage the attention of both Governments in friendly consultation and co-operation in accordance with the spirit of the recent agreement.

There are other problems which such a body might most usefully consider. Bearing in mind that grass is our principal national asset, the greatest problem before us, and indeed before other countries, is how to get the best value out of our grass, both summer and winter.

The traditional method, of course, is to make hay of surplus grass, but we all know that hay is a very inadequate ration for cattle in the winter time. There have been other methods of getting the most out of the surplus summer grass which I should like to see fairly investigated under the supervision of some competent authority like that which I have in mind.

For example, there is that well-known AIV process of grass conservation in the form of silage which has had a certain success in Finland. It may or may not he suitable for conditions over here, but, in any event, I should like to see the matter thoroughly explored. Those who are interested would do well to consult Dr Kennedy, of the IAOS. He, I think, has made a special study of the problems which the AIV method is an effort to solve.

There is another useful function which such a council or commission might fulfil. The Minister, with his expert advisers, might sometimes arrive at certain conclusions to which he would like to give practical effect, but he may feel unable to do so because he might antagonise important agricultural interests who would not fully understand the situation.

If he had a body of expert agricultural advisers, drawn mainly from the ranks of first-class farmers, to consult, and if he enjoyed confidential relations with such a body, he could, after consultation with that body, give effect to administrative and other measures which would probably arouse the most intense opposition if he did not strengthen his hand in advance by some such consultation.

In general, my feeling is that we have had over a number of years policies of economic impoverishment, owing to various causes, and if I may speak for a moment -- it is rather a lapse, I admit -- as a partisan rather than as a purely non-partisan person, I would say that there were certain aspects of the policy which has triumphed at the recent election which did involve economic impoverishment; but I also say that you are not under any democratic obligation to give effect to a policy of economic impoverishment, even if you did win an election by such means.

I would emphasise that the people will forgive any Government which, however it won an election, has the sense to abandon a policy of economic impoverishment in favour of a policy which promises to enrich and promote the welfare of the nation as a whole. In general, I hope we shall be able to co-operate with the Government in every possible way in trying to put the agricultural industry back on its feet.

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 1999