ADDENDUM to Chapter XIX, Local Integration of Agricultural Production, p175

After some conversation with General Costello, who is Manager of the Irish Sugar Company, and has a thoroughly realistic outlook on the problems of Irish agriculture, I contributed an article to the "Irish Farmers' Journal," the organ of the Young Farmers' Club Movement in Ireland. In the course of it I suggested that the technique of a Bankers' Cheque Clearing Union might well be applied to Irish agriculture on a local or parochial scale.

I outlined the procedure as follows and attached a specimen of a typical clearing account by way of illustration:-

"A is a farmer with 200 statute acres in the town-land of P in the parish of Q in the county of R. His farm is highly mechanised and he is inclined to specialise in crop cultivation though he also goes in largely for dry cattle, which he buys as stores from a distance. He only keeps three milch cows, but does not rear any of the calves born on his place because his neighbour D is a specialist in calf rearing, so he turns them over to D. He produces heavy crops of feed potatoes, oats and Ymer barley - more than he can use on his own farm. He sells large quantities of these to D and E, D being a specialist in milk production and E in pig breeding. He buys bonhams from E and pullets from F. He keeps only about 50 hens and does not want the trouble of rearing them. He employs four men regularly about the place, but now that extra labour is no longer casual but organised, he is inclined to expand his beet acreage, relying on the spare-time labour of certain persons from the households of D, E, F, G and H. He does a certain amount of cultivating and harvesting for D, E and F.

"A has a heavy tractor and a light one, but not even A can afford to own all the two or three score implements which are necessary for complete mechanisation. It is arranged among them that C will acquire a manure spreader and a hay elevator, D a Cambridge roller, E a potato boiler for silage, etc. He himself has, of course, a corn-drill, a combine harvester, a disc-harrow, a rotovator, a potato spinner, and a threshing mill.

"The members of the '..... Agricultural Clearing Union' get together and arrange a schedule of time rates and/or acreage rates for different kinds of labour and different implements or power units. Produce and livestock would, of course, be exchanged at current local agreed market prices. They also appoint a secretary X to keep the records. Thus A having done a job with his rotovator for D gets D to sign a 'chit' like this: 'Debit my a/c for ....hours rotovator work.' A gives the 'chit' to X and down it goes in the a/c - a plus item for A and a minus item for D.

"H lives in a labourer's cottage and has one acre of garden, which is full of raspberry bushes and apples. He has four sons, one of whom is a skilled horticulturist, who works for the 'Union' as well as in his own garden. Another is a skilled motor mechanic, who has a lorry and a van. A is glad to use H's transport equipment from time to time. Every time he uses it he signs a debit note, which H deposits with X, and, of course, B, C, D, and E, F and G find it useful also.

"B is a specialist in milk production, with 20 cows and 30 dry cattle on his 100 acres. He draws on his neighbours heavily for feed, and on balance he owes the clearing a/c at the end of the year.

"C has a 200 acre farm, half of it waste land though reclaimable. He has little family labour, so he does little tillage and goes in mostly for dry cattle, feeding them on grass, hay and silage. He buys in stores from his colleagues and at the end of the year his a/c is heavily negative.

"D, who has 50 acres, is a specialist in calf rearing. He keeps a Hereford bull and 20 half-Hereford cows, and rears about 60 calves in the year on his cows, buying in the surplus calves. At the end of the year his a/c, should be positive.

"E is a specialist in pig breeding. He has 50 acres, and rears about 40 bonhams a year with his four sows. He keeps 6 cows and 18 other cattle and does a certain amount of mixed general farming. His a/c should be nearly neutral.

"F has only 30 acres, so he specialises in raising chickens for sale as pullets and cockerels. He only keeps 3 cows and 12 other cattle and he buys a lot oats and barley from the 'Union.'

"G, with only 10 acres, specialises in commercial egg production and only keeps a couple of cows.

"We have already noticed that H is practically a land-less man, but his sons have valuable skills, both mechanical and horticultural. One of them does all the pruning and spraying of fruit trees for the neighbours (who formerly neglected their orchards), and they are glad to debit their a/cs with his well-earned reward.

"Below (is given), for purposes of illustration only, a specimen of the kind of clearing a/c which would arise as a result of a policy of integrating the farm programmes, machines, implements and skills available on an aggregate of 641 acres. Of course the milk, the large cattle, the wheat, beet, eggs, etc., sold outside the Union membership do not appear in this a/c at all. B's milk cheque should more than pay the £670 he owes the clearing a/c and similarly with regard to G and C.

"Space does not permit a lengthy exposition of the advantages of such an arrangement. Briefly - mechanisation is uneconomic unless there is an adequate number and variety of implements locally available for each power unit locally used. Borrowing and lending as at present practised is unsatisfactory, because people are not so good at returning as at borrowing. A farmer would be more disposed to buy a new implement if he could count on his neighbours helping to pay for it in a regular 'scheduled' way. Tillage will diminish and lazy all-grass farming will return unless we can arrange to aggregate 1,000 acre units for tillage purposes, and the Clearing Union technique will make possible such aggregation without impairing the individual ownership of his small farm by the farmer, which in its own way is also a valuable feature of our rural economy."

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 2003