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Country life history – Introduction

This blog feature many aspects of social change in rural Ireland from the time of which it was first inhabited, its survival as a hunter gatherer type of society, the ingress of new peoples from abroad, the introduction of new technology, and new ways of living. In order to appreciate the circumstances which its people had and have to contend with, special emphasis has been placed on its geology, soils, and its climate. The purpose is to construct a narrative from its early history right up until the present day. Up to the first millennium change happened slowly. The conversion to Christianity and the coming of the uninvited Vikings were the major social influence on Irish society in the first millennium, while the Normans and particularly the British were the main influencing factors for most of the the second. In the twentieth century, Britain, self government, separation from our Northern Ireland neighbors and EU membership were and still are main influencing factors on Rural Ireland as a whole. Continue reading

Ireland, Britain and Denmark are Permitted to Join the EEC(E.U.)

From Mansholt to the The Rural Environment Protection Scheme (REPS)

The UK’s policy since 1947 did not recognise social need nor environmental hardship.criteria. Payments were paid on the basis of output and thus, the larger the farm the greater the amount of payments that were received. The social vulnerability of ‘uneconomic’ British hill farmers was recognised by giving them special help to keep them in business. The Hill Farming act of 1946 allowed ‘headage payments’ to be made to sheep and cattle farmers in designated hill areas – essentially a per capita subsidy on costs of production.  However, Newby in books states “It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that small farmers, whether in the uplands or the lowlands, have been an embarrassment for post war policy makers. In general agricultural policy has, whatever the rhetoric, attempted to remove as many small farmers as quickly as possible and further promote the tendency towards the increasing concentration of production. This objective lay at the heart of the difficulty which British agricultural policy found in adapting to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) after entry into the European Economic Community in 1973”.

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was specifically designed both to keep small farmer in production and to be used as a tool of general socioeconomic development in rural areas.  France and Germany economies, the main players in the original EEC were very suited. France mainly an agricultural economy was a very important market for German machinery, electrical goods, while Germany was an excellent market for French agricultural goods. Furthermore, the basis of support was switched from general taxation to (via deficiency payments) to consumer prices (via direct market intervention). This in according to Newby’s was guaranteed to re-politicize agricultural policy and drag the debate on farm support back …………….into the full glare of the public arena. As far the British farmer was concerned, entry into the EEC proved, in the short term, almost embarrassingly beneficial in most sectors of production.  “The longer-term consequence, however, has been to re-open once more the festering resentment of consumers towards food producers which had been a historically familiar feature at all times when food prices have risen sharply. Thus the abandonment of a ‘cheap food’ policy has produced a public debate reminiscent of that which existed throughout the nineteenth century – only now farmers are politically still less dominant and numerically verging on the insignificant …………………..State intervention in agriculture, in promoting a highly capitalized farming industry, unwittingly or otherwise promoted the interest of agribusiness companies in British agriculture. Successive governments, in supporting the farmer, have also supported large sections of the engineering industry, through farmer purchases of farm machinery, the chemical industry (fertilisers, pesticides, etc) and food processors, packagers and distributors. In turn, agribusiness companies have become major agents of social and economic change in rural Britain since the Second World War………………… Particularly important elements in the relationship between farmer and agribusiness companies are the provision of credit facilities and the advice on the purchase of new capital equipment, for in-order to participate in contract farming for agribusiness  clients, farmers must frequently purchase highly specialised (and expensive) equipment on which they might otherwise be reluctant to risk their investment. Where mutually beneficial commercial arrangements end, and the reduction of the farmer’s begins, has often been difficult to discern……………………. Smaller farmers, who rarely participate in such contractual arrangements, have found themselves further marginalised, while the larger farmers have found their enterprises gradually transformed by relentless ‘industrial’ logic of corporate agribusiness are encouraged to become more specialised in order to make the optimum use of their specialised technology and skills. ……………….The implications of these changes are widespread and have been given less attention than they deserve……………….It is not clear to what extent have been able to retain the full benefits of their own increasing cost efficiency. Many farmers have certainly believed that agribusiness domination of food production has done little to alleviate their own ‘cost-price squeeze’. If anything, it has further exacerbated the ‘treadmill effect’, whereby cost-efficiency is linked to technological innovation, which demands the generation of resources made possible only by further cost efficiency and further technological innovation”.

The 1968 Mansholt Plan of the EEC was adopted in 1972, shortly before Ireland’s entry. It was designed to bring about substantial fall in the numbers employed in farming, while ensuring that those remaining would be capable of earning comparable incomes to workers in industry and services. Landholding would be consolidated to create larger farms, with special aid provided for farmers who were regarded as capable of becoming commercially viable. When the Mansholt Plan was drafted, most of the EEC had enjoyed full employment. The European Commission was keen to encourage workers to move from agriculture into sectors of the economy that were experiencing labour shortages. It was obvious that Ireland was not a member when the plan was drafted, because there was little immediate prospect that industry could provide jobs for any substantial number of agricultural workers, and proposals for deliberate reduction in the farming population would have been unacceptable. The Farm Modernisation Scheme was introduced in 1974 and was much more acceptable to the farming organizations and people. Farmers were divided into three categories:

 

  • Development Farms, where the income per labour unit was below that of non-farm workers, but was capable of being increased; development farmers were required to draw up a six-year development plan with assistance of an agricultural adviser and to keep detailed accounts;
  • Commercial Farms, where income per labour unit was already above the average for non-farm workers;
  • Others – a category that included those with low income that were not capable of being increased.

 

All three could apply for grant assistance for land improvement, farm buildings, capital equipment, horticultural projects, and keeping accounts, although the rate of assistance varied between all three categories. Development farmers could also claim grants towards the cost of purchasing additional animals, provided they had drawn up a livestock development plan. The EEC met the cost of assisting development farmers, the cost of providing grants for commercial and ‘other’ farmers was met by the Irish government.  By 1982, over 115,000 farmers were participating in the scheme: 4,643 farmers were classified as commercial, 26,745 as development farmers, but the overwhelming majority of 84,000 were classified as other.

In 1975 the EEC introduced the Disadvantaged Area Scheme. It could have been regarded as ‘a U-turn’ by the then Fine Gael-Labour coalition government, since it offered incomes for non-viable farmers to remain on the land, whereas the original intention of the Mansholt Plan had been to encourage them to leave farming. The ‘U-turn’ was prompted by opposition to the original plan, and by the rising level of unemployment throughout the Community; by 1975 it was no longer desirable to encourage a mass exodus from farming. The introduction of the Disadvantaged Areas Scheme removed one of the major criticisms directed against the EEC farm policy – the absence of a regional dimension. The criticism was particularly pertinent in Ireland, where a pilot areas programme had been in operation in western counties since the 1960s’. In 1981 a special Western Development Programme was introduced for full time farmers, who were ineligible for the Farm Retirement Scheme and failed to qualify for development status.

In 1984 quota restrictions on EEC milk output were introduced in response to the problem of surpluses and their budgetary consequences. The operation of the scheme has had wide-ranging effects on agricultural patterns and markets and on linked activities. One of the features of it was a guaranteed price for milk producers throughout the EEC. This ultimately had it as its consequence a supply of milk and milk products throughout the EEC which was hugely in excess of the demand, resulting in massive costs to the community and severe downward pressure on milk prices. Attempts to deal with the problem in other ways having proved abortive, the scheme adopted in 1984 provided for a ceiling on milk production in each of the member States and the allocation to individual producers of a ceiling on their annual production. This was affected by the imposition of what was described as a “super levy” on any producer who exceeded the ceiling which would render uneconomic the production of any milk in excess of the relevant figure. This was done by the allocation of what were called “reference quantities” to the individual producers which became known as “quotas” and it will be seen that it was an essential part of the scheme that the total of the quotas in any member State, including Ireland, should not exceed the quota allocated by the EEC to the member State in question. The scheme was originally intended to run for five years up to the 31st March 1989, but was in fact successively extended up to the 31st March 1993. A new, but substantially similar, system was then adopted which expired on 31st March 2000. For Ireland it was a huge disappointment, once again we were being halted in our main farming enterprise. One of our main reasons for joining the EEC (expansion of our dairy industry) was under quota.

In 1985 the Farm Modernisation Scheme was replaced by a more flexible Farm Improvement Programme, where any low-income farmer who agreed to draft a development plan and to keep simplified accounts would qualify for investment aids. Installation Aid, Green Certs, followed. While the number of people farming with less than 30 acres (12 Hecatres) was more than halved between 1971 and 1986, most of the land was either let on a one year basis (con acre) or leased for a longer period. But our experience did not differ that much from other EU countries – the smaller operator tended to hold on to his property. A 1989 report by the National Economic And social council (NESC) identified three reasons for the absence of significant changes in ownership and control of farmland:

 

  1. The inadequate level of EEC funding for structural programmes, particularly when this was compared with the amount that was spent on price and market support;
  2. EU price and market support schemes, which may have exacerbated structural problems because large farmers benefited to a disproportionate extent;
  3. The absence of a national socio-structural policy, especially coherent land policy.

 

The 1987 Programme for National Recovery, which was drawn up. It followed lengthy discussions between government, farming organisations, industry and trade unions. It set out a strategy for transforming the Irish economy.  The EEC was conscious of the contrast between the booming US economy and the stagnant European economies, and it proposed the creation of a Single European Market by 1992, replicating trans–continental economy of the United States. This involved removing a range of non-tariff barriers to trade and competition within the community.  A significant number of countries who were party to the Uruguay Round of trade talks demanded that the EEC open up trade in agricultural produce.  They demanded that the EEC cease selling surplus agricultural produce on world markets at highly-subsidised prices. In 1988 the EC agreed to freeze its price support at 1984 level, and to reduce it in the long term. It also agreed to reduce barriers against imports of food from non-member countries. In 1999, negotiations on further reform of world trade in agriculture commenced under the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the successor organization to the GATT.

However, before all that, massive reforms of the CAP had been put in train. In 1992 Joe Walsh Minister for Agriculture told the Dail that there was an agreement regarding CAP reform, amongst the Council Members for Agriculture under Ray McSharry. The reforms involved a partial shift of the EU farm aid from market support to direct payments, or premia that would be targeted at farmers in greatest need. Prices were modified to favour smaller producers and disadvantaged regions. The 80 per cent payments to 20 per cent of farmers, was to be reversed. The quantity of beef, mutton, cereals oil seed qualifying for price support was capped, and the support price for cereals, beef and milk were reduced. Suckler premia, new male beef premia, and premia for extensive beef farming were brought in. Set aside (leaving land idle), land diverted to forestry, and a more generous scheme for farmer retirement were put in place. The Rural Environment Protection Scheme (REPS) was introduced in 1994. REPS offered farmers a fixed annual payment per hectare for five years, in return for a commitment to adopt environmentally –friendly farming practices.

By 1998 direct payments to farmers accounted for 56 per cent of aggregate farm income. By the following year 90 per cent of all payments were made within a specified time. The objectives of the Rural Environment Scheme were to promote:

  • Ways of using agricultural land which are compatible with the protection and improvement of the environment, biodiversity, the landscape and its features, climate change, natural resources, water quality, the soil and genetic diversity;
  • Environmentally-favourable farming systems;
  • The conservation of high nature-value farmed environments which are under threat;
  • To protect against abandonment;
  • To sustain the social fabric in rural communities;
  • To contribute to positive environmental management of farmed NATURA 2000 sites.

Plans were required to be drawn up by a REPS planner (An Agricultural Graduate), signed by the farmer and lodged in the local Department of Agriculture Office.

The Reps scheme finished in 2014.

 

The Lead up to Joining the EEC

Between 1961 and 1971 the number employed in Ireland’s agriculture and forestry fell by more than one quarter, and the pattern in other european countries indicated that this process would probaly continue. Although the EEC would reduce Ireland’s dependence on the UK market, and it promised substantially higher prices for farm produce, it would not resolve the long-term problems of structural adjustment and declining workforce in Irish farming. In December 1968 the EEC published the Mansholt Plan, which set out the long term programme for structural reform. The plan anticipated that 5 million people throughout the EEC would leave farming during the 1970s. EEC membership therefore presented a major challenge to the Department of Agriculture and to Irish farming, not least the need to bring about transformation of Irish agriculture that would be acceptable to Irish farmers and the wider community. In the early 1960s Britain and the EEC accounted for two-thirds of the world import of dairy products; three-quaters of world meat imports; one-third of sugar imports; and half of the world’s commercial imports of wheat. The Department of Agriculture believed that the best option for Ireland was to attach itself to ‘one of the price supported blocks’ – EEC or Britain; in order to achieve this, Ireland should be prepared to reduce tarriffs on manufactured goods in return for market concessions for agricultural produce. On the 21 January 1963, within days of de Gaulle’s veto on Britain’s membership, the committee of secretaries recommended that Ireland should explore the prospect of securing an Anglo Irish trade agreement.

Ireland had already failed to secure this type of agreement in 1959/60 and the prospects of an agreement on this occasion appeared even less promising. Bilateral trade talks between Denmark and Britain on the 13th March of 1963, removed the 15s per cwt duty that it had on its butter on account of it being a member of the European Free Trade Association(EFTA). This was a shock to Sean Lemass(Taoiseach) and Frank Aiken(Minister of External Affairs), who had a pre-arranged meeting five days later for special treatment of Irish Butter and Meat. Britain claimed that although it gave equal adavantage to Denmark, that the position would be controlled by quotas. Nagle of the Dept of Agricultural noted sometime  afterwards, that Ireland’s agricultural exports had deteriorated considerably, while Britain retained all its existing advantages in the Irish market. Denmark ended up getting quite a good quota for its butter. Later in the year Britain removed all import duties on butter irrespective of the country of origin. However, after three years negotiations an Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area agreement was signed between the two countries. Charles Haughey the then Minister for Agriculture adressed the Dail on 5 January 1966 and noted that prior to the agreement Ireland was in:

….. a very vulnerable position in respect of one of our most important

forms of economic activity – our agricultural exports …. the truth of

the matter is that during the past decade or so our Irish agricultural

production has been carried on under the shade of disorganised and

uncertain export markets.

.  The agreement according to Professor  Daly, was a triumph for Irish persistence over Britsih indifference. In Ireland the agreement was widely condemmed, ending Irish economic independence. Liam Cosgrave of Fine Gael, described it as an unbalanced agreement: ‘in return for limited and doubtful agricultuural gains virtually the entire Irish market for manufactured goods would be exposed to high powered competition from British Industry’.

In May 1966 Charles Haughey commissioned a study on introducing a ‘two tier milk price’. Lieutenant General M.J. Costello; E.A. Atwood, an economist attached to the Agricultural Research Institute; A.J. O’Reilly, the managring director of An Bord Bainne; Paddy O’Keeffe editor of the Irish Farmers Journal and J.J. Scully the Department officer in charge of western development, who were appointed to it reported back: ‘that the disadvantages of a two-tier milk price outweighed the advantages. If the governmeent wished to provide special assistance to small farmers, they recommended that it should be done through a bonus incentive scheme for low-income farmers who drew up a farm development plan. This plan would apply to all farm enterprises. To qualify, a dairy farmer would have to produce a plan showing that he/she was in a position to raise his output to at least 7000 gallons of quality milk’. A small farm incentive bonus scheme was introduced two years later based on the ideas that the commission put forward. However, a two-tier milk price was also introduced in the same year – giving suppliers of up to 7,000 gallons an extra one penny per gallon. This was one of the main aims of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association (ICMSA), whereas the IFA(NFA) were totally opposed to it 

By the late 60s’ the UK and the US were main countries for export of beef and Continental Europe exports had almost disappeared.  In April 1968 the Agricultural Adjustment Unit at the University of Newcastle-on-Tyne organised a conference on ‘Irish Agriculture in a Changing World’. In a postscript to a book of the same name, which contained the conference papers, the editors, I.F. Baillie and Dr. Seamus Sheehy remarked:

As speaker succeeded speaker a sense of gloom and pessimism seemed to settle over the conference. While inevitability of change and the need for readjustment were accepted, there was a feeling of helplessness. Ireland appeared to be trapped by remorseless economic and social pressures from within and without, and little hope was seen of changing the direction of existing policies or of influencing the formulation of new policies’.

By 1970 Britain was on the economic war path once more – bending to pressure from Denmark, New Zealnd and their own farmers. Again after lengthy arguments with the Irish Government, they announced that they were introducing a variable import levies on imports of cattle, beef, mutton, lamb and milk products other than butter and cheese which were already controlled by quota; even though it was pointed out to them that ‘the deficit in the Irish trade balance with Britain had been increasing for several years, which suggested that Britain had been the main beneficiary from the 1965 trade agreement’. Obviously, the principle of self-sufficiency laid-down in the Agriculture Act 1947, was still the guiding principle for the United Kingdom government. The Act continued to give tremendous protection to its own farmers increased production, while getting non British countries support a cheap food policy for its citizens. By 1970 Irish government price subsidies of dairy products had increased to £30.5 million from £4.7 million in 1960/1.

Between 1960 and 1968 family farm income rose by 52 per cent, the number of family farms fell by 17 per cent. The Annual Report of the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries in 1973/74 remarked that:

Over the past decade agricultural production had tended to become more specialised, both at the industry level with the growing concentration on cattle and milk and at individual farm enterprise. This is part of the general move towards a commercial system of agricultural production. It is evident that the development of more intensive farm enterprises will proceed further in the coming years.

Until Ireland joined the EEC in January 1973, agricultural policy was formulated exclusively by the government on the advice of the Minsister of Agriculture and his Department. Of course policy decisions had to take account conditions in the major markets, particularly the United Kingdom. Farm organisations also gained extra influence over agricultural policy since the previous decade.

 

A New Beginning For Irish Farmers through Research & Development

There is little doubt that human Nutrition is the most important problem confronting mankind at the present time. The problem is one of both quantity and quality. It is estimated that at present two-thirds of the world’s population, of 2,800 millions are underfed and this population is increasing by geometrical progression at a rate that will double in the next hundred years.” Ref H.M. Sinclair D.M., M.A., B.Sc; M.R.C.P.; L.M.S.A. in a Foreword to Andre Voisin’s Book Soil, Grass and Cancer  – 1959. Now the world 50 years later certainly Sinclair’s estimate has proved a somewhat conservative, as it has reached 7 billions. Through the massive switch to Chemical fertilizer, water, farming and food mechanization the world hunger situation has somewhat abated, even though it has grown by over 4 billion – 143 percent in half a century. President Roosevelt was the first world leader in 1938 to warn about the depressed yields and quality of the food from U.S. crops; detrimentally affectingthe physical and economic security of the people of the nation.”.

 Voisin was a very famous Normandy Veterinary Professor and farmer. In his book he starts off “Remember that you are dust “the dust” of our cells is the dust of the soil. We should frequently meditate on the words of Ash Wednesday; “Man remember you are dust and that you will return to dust” That is not merely a religious and philosophical doctrine but a scientific truth which should be engraved above the entrance to every Faculty of Medicine throughout the world. We might then better remember that our cells are made up of the mineral elements which are to be found at any given moment in the soil of Normandy, Yorkshire or Australia; and if these “dusts” have been wrongly assembled in the plant, animal or human cells the result will be imperfect functioning of the latter. It particularly relates to Phosphorus an non renewable resource, which will be dealt with in detail at a later stage and our own limited Phosphate rock resource here in Ireland.

Voisin was reiterating what our own Professor E.J. Sheehy of Agriculture Faculty in U.C.D had written in his book ‘Animal Nutrition’ 1955. He noted, that from research work carried out, that a lot of the soils in post war Ireland were deficient in phosphate. This showed up particularly in old pasture and the hay or silage made from it. It was more widespread than what people realized. The Professor goes on to note the symptoms of the deficiency which was quite common on farms at the time.: ‘Phosphate deficiency in pasture affects both milch cows and grazing stock. In severe cases the cow’s yield a much reduced quantity of milk, the body becomes drawn up and hidebound, the gait becomes stilted, lameness and cramp set in, and there is a craving for extraneous materials such as sticks, stones, etc, and oestrus is deferred for long periods. The young stock make very slow growth and very poor weight for their age nothwithstanding liberal supplies of herbage. ………….There is some evidence that young horses grazing such land are likewise affected as shown by the development of “ founder”. In all such cases of aphosphorosis the level of phosphorus in the blood of affected stock is below normal’.  This mainly arose because of the difficulties of acquiring rock phosphate during the Second World War and compulsory tillage. However, other deficiencies were common in the Ireland proceeding modern day diet, which is of a international nature and oft time supplemented by the food processor. In the South Tipperary soils are naturally deficient in iodine and in the Glenville area of Co. Cork are deficient in Copper; in the pre and post war era, a lot of people in those areas suffered from the deficiency of those minerals; because they ate mainly the foods produced on their own farms. Dr. Garry Fleming of An Foras Taluntais did a lot of research work in trace elements in the years that followed and with modern crop and animal nutrition most of those problems faded into the background. One of the first most important technical developments was the emergence of ground limestone as a suitable source of neutralizing the large number of acid soils particularly for grain and sugar beet growers. Previously, liming was dependent on expensive and laborious burnt lime got from lime kilns. The Irish Sugar Company did a major lot of development of both lime and fertilizers through soil analyses for the Beet Growers. The Local Agricultural Instructor dealt with the subject in detail in their night classes to farmers and the Interparty government gave a transport subsidy of 16s per ton for ground limestone and £4 per ton subsidy on phosphate fertilizer was introduced in December 1957 under the Lemas led government.

In the 1960s thousands flocked to open days held in the Dairy Research Centre at Moorepark, to hear the latest from Drs Michael Walsh, Dan Browne, Pat McFeely etc on the experiments of cow to 0.8 of an acre, at 220 units of nutrient nitrogen per acre and 400 kgs of feed concentrate plus silage during the winter. Cows had to be taken off the grass paddocks by mid November and grazing started again on the 1st of March. At this particular time the Dutch were using at least double the amount of nitrogen and five times the meals, but their yields were about 50% higher than ours. Drs Jim O’Grady, and Tom Hanrahan were carrying research on the McGukian and Jordan type pig fattening houses, as they were in common use in Northern Ireland at that point in time. Similarly with the beef research unit at Grange Co. Meath under Dr. Joe Harte excellent research work was being carried out. 

The Post War Years for Ireland

The appalling weather conditions of 1946 and 1947, which some of us can remember, did nothing for the morale of the Irish people. The scarcity of materials, and shortage of convertible currency owing to the sterling crisis did not help. The general election of 1948 marked the beginning of almost a decade of volatile politics. In 1948 James Dillon became Minister for agriculture in the first inter party government.  He was the son of Irish Party M.P. and Land League founder, John Dillon. The new minister favoured a florid parliamentary style, which was in marked contrast to the two previous Ministers in the previous de Valera governments. The first announcement made by Dillon was that the compulsory tillage would end in the Autumn of that year. This was entirely in keeping with his economic philosophy – during his years in the opposition benches he had been extremely critical of what he regarded as un-due intervention in economic matters by Fianna Fail. In November 1948 Dr. T.F. O’Higgins, who was acting Minister for Agriculture in Dillon’s absence, noted ‘If the present Minister for Agriculture did nothing else for agriculture: he made the farmers of this country free men, the owners of their land and free to work it their own way’ By June of 1950 he (Dillon) informed the Dail that he had ‘ sought to crystallize the agricultural policy of this government in the aphorism’: “One more cow, one sow, one more acre under the plough”.  Resumption of butter exports became possible in the early 50s’ but amounts of exports were small – mostly surplus for which there was no storage because the bulk of manufacture was now more than ever a summer operation. Despite the continuation of a mild form of rationing, some New Zealand or Danish butter had to be imported for winter use. A New Zealand grassland expert, G.A. Holmes reported to the Irish Government in 1948: “Let me say, first of all, that there is no area of comparable size in the Northern Hemisphere which has such marvelous potentialities for pasture production as Eire undoubtedly has …… In eight of the twenty six counties I have seen old pastures with density, colour, composition, and grazing capacity superior to anything in Western Europe, their quality being proved by the excellence of the cattle on them. In some of the same counties ……….I saw hundreds of fields which are growing just as little as physically possible for the land to grow under an Irish sky”. Source: Report by G.A. Holmes on the Present State and Methods for Improvement of Irish Land. 

When Fianna Fail returned to government in 1951 it made a determined effort to reverse the decline of tillage, placing special emphasis on wheat.  A memorandum to government from the Department of Agriculture shortly after getting into office stated that ‘it is Government policy to encourage maximum tillage. The real danger is, however, that in view of the high prices now obtaining for cattle and other livestock, farmers may reduce their tillage area still further reducing employment on the land. If farmers reduce their tillage area it would be extremely difficult to increase tillage at a later date without resort to compulsion. During the depressed economic circumstances of 1957 several members of Fianna Fail wrote to de Valera, suggesting that a new drive for agricultural self-sufficiency offered solutions to the unemployment crisis, but by then enthusiasm had waned, at least among the party leaders.  Net agricultural output rose by 17.7 percent between 1949/51 and 1959/61, yet the 1958 figures were only two per cent higher than the 1912. The number of men involved in agriculture had reduced by 93,000 in more or less the same period and the rate of emigration returned to a level last experienced in the 1880s’. Meanwhile post-war Britain was enjoying full employment and there were unlimited jobs available for Irish emigrants as building labourers and domestic workers.  Most countries in Western Europe experienced a similar decline in the numbers involved in agriculture. However, in Ireland as well as Southern Europe, manufacturing industry failed to provide alternative jobs.

One theme that begins to feature during this period is the potential conflict between economic development and social objectives, such as preserving the family farm. In 1945 James Ryan, the Minister for Agriculture, noted that ‘we are up against a sort of conflict between the social and economic aim. The social aim is put as many people as we can on the land, the economic aim is to give the farmer a better living. It is doubtful if we can get the two policies to coincide’. Professor Mary E. Daly summarises the thirteen years immediately after the Second World War as follows: ‘The years between 1945 and 1958 have probably been regarded in an unduly critical light. In the Department of Agriculture there was a shift from the introspective atmosphere of the 1930s and the war years. Many Irish agricultural scientists travelled to the United States under ERP technical assistance, and the Department became involved in international organistions such as Organization for European Economic co-operation (OEEC), and the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO). These contacts created greater awareness of scientific and economic trends in other countries, which resulted in a more critical assessment of domestic policies’.

A New Beginning For Irish Farmers through Research & Development  

There is little doubt that human Nutrition is the most important problem confronting mankind at the present time. The problem is one of both quantity and quality. It is estimated that at present two-thirds of the world’s population, of 2,800 millions are underfed and this population is increasing by geometrical progression at a rate that will double in the next hundred years.” Ref H.M. Sinclair D.M., M.A., B.Sc; M.R.C.P.; L.M.S.A. in a Foreword to Andre Voisin’s Book Soil, Grass and Cancer  – 1959. Now the world 50 years later certainly Sinclair’s estimate has proved a somewhat conservative, as it has reached 7 billions. Through the massive switch to Chemical fertilizer, water, farming and food mechanization the world hunger situation has somewhat abated, even though it has grown by over 4 billion – 143 percent in half a century. President Roosevelt was the first world leader in 1938 to warn about the depressed yields and quality of the food from U.S. crops; detrimentally affecting “the physical and economic security of the people of the nation.”.

Voisin was a very famous Normandy Veterinary Professor and farmer. In his book he starts off “Remember that you are dust “the dust” of our cells is the dust of the soil. We should frequently meditate on the words of Ash Wednesday; “Man remember you are dust and that you will return to dust” That is not merely a religious and philosophical doctrine but a scientific truth which should be engraved above the entrance to every Faculty of Medicine throughout the world. We might then better remember that our cells are made up of the mineral elements which are to be found at any given moment in the soil of Normandy, Yorkshire or Australia; and if these “dusts” have been wrongly assembled in the plant, animal or human cells the result will be imperfect functioning of the latter. It particularly relates to Phosphorus an non renewable resource, which will be dealt with in detail at a later stage and our own limited Phosphate rock resource here in Ireland.

Voisin was reiterating what our own Professor E.J. Sheehy of Agriculture Faculty in U.C.D had written in his book ‘Animal Nutrition’ 1955. He noted, that from research work carried out, that a lot of the soils in post war Ireland were deficient in phosphate. This showed up particularly in old pasture and the hay or silage made from it. It was more widespread than what people realized. The Professor goes on to note the symptoms of the deficiency which was quite common on farms at the time.: ‘Phosphate deficiency in pasture affects both milch cows and grazing stock. In severe cases the cow’s yield a much reduced quantity of milk, the body becomes drawn up and hidebound, the gait becomes stilted, lameness and cramp set in, and there is a craving for extraneous materials such as sticks, stones, etc, and oestrus is deferred for long periods. The young stock make very slow growth and very poor weight for their age nothwithstanding liberal supplies of herbage. ………….There is some evidence that young horses grazing such land are likewise affected as shown by the development of “ founder”. In all such cases of aphosphorosis the level of phosphorus in the blood of affected stock is below normal’.  This mainly arose because of the difficulties of acquiring rock phosphate during the Second World War and compulsory tillage. However, other deficiencies were common in the Ireland proceeding modern day diet, which is of a international nature and oft time supplemented by the food processor. In the South Tipperary soils are naturally deficient in iodine and in the Glenville area of Co. Cork are deficient in Copper; in the pre and post war era, a lot of people in those areas suffered from the deficiency of those minerals; because they ate mainly the foods produced on their own farms. Dr. Garry Fleming of An Foras Taluntais did a lot of research work in trace elements in the years that followed and with modern crop and animal nutrition most of those problems faded into the background. One of the first most important technical developments was the emergence of ground limestone as a suitable source of neutralizing the large number of acid soils particularly for grain and sugar beet growers. Previously, liming was dependent on expensive and laborious burnt lime got from lime kilns. The Irish Sugar Company did a major lot of development of both lime and fertilizers through soil analyses for the Beet Growers. The Local Agricultural Instructor dealt with the subject in detail in their night classes to farmers and the Interparty government gave a transport subsidy of 16s per ton for ground limestone and £4 per ton subsidy on phosphate fertilizer was introduced in December 1957 under the Lemas led government.

In the 1960s thousands flocked to open days held in the Dairy Research Centre at Moorepark, to hear the latest from Drs Michael Walsh, Dan Browne, Pat McFeely etc on the experiments of cow to 0.8 of an acre, at 220 units of nutrient nitrogen per acre and 400 kgs of feed concentrate plus silage during the winter. Cows had to be taken off the grass paddocks by mid November and grazing started again on the 1st of March. At this particular time the Dutch were using at least double the amount of nitrogen and five times the meals, but their yields were about 50% higher than ours. Drs Jim O’Grady, and Tom Hanrahan were carrying research on the McGukian and Jordan type pig fattening houses, as they were in common use in Northern Ireland at that point in time. Similarly with the beef research unit at Grange Co. Meath under Dr. Joe Harte excellent research work was being carried out.

The Post War Agricultural Revolution

After the War Quentin Seddon in his book The Silent Revolution – Farming and the Countryside into the 21st Century: wrote about the U.K. ‘As late as the 1950s we suffered more from tuberculosis than any comparable country. Tuberculosis (TB) is a killer, it killed between 2000 and 3000 children outright per year, shortened the lives of many adults, and made invalids of thousands more both young and old. It also destroyed the lungs and other tissue of cattle, leading to their debility and early death as well. …………………………. Milk could be made safe by pasteurizing but farm families were at risk because they drank the raw milk…………………….There were 150,000 dairy herds in 1947 and of all of those cows 70 per cent of them were hand milked. A small farmer usually had 10 cows for that was all one pair of hands could mange – while a bigger herd also meant more risk from tuberculosis and other diseases. Twice daily milking was hard, painful work. On the rawest winter mornings, burning muscles were thrust gratefully into the icy flow from cold tap. For years the experts had said that the resulting scarcity of labour – especially that of women – for this demanding job would see the end of dairy farming. ……………………….After the war, bringing in the machines lowered the yearly labour costs by £2 to £3 per cow or about half the weekly wage of one man. Pasteurisation, (milking) parlour hygiene, and disease eradication combined to produce healthy cows, healthy people and pure milk…………………….. This world of plague, peasants and pitiful diseased children is so remote to day that the struggles to end it less than fifty years ago have already been forgotten. …………………… The 150,000 dairy farmers who after the war served their local communities with milk of uncertain quality, and the hundreds of small commercial dairies spreading it to markets only marginally wider, have to-day become 35,000 farmers and four huge concerns – Unigate, Express, Northern Foods and Dairy Crest. ………………………. The small dairy farmer has now become an endangered species himself in need of conservation. The same pattern repeats itself everywhere – in food, plenty and diversity; in farming, size and specialisation. There is now so much diversity that we should talk about farmings rather than about farming. The specialist pig farmers has little in common with the specialist producer of tomatoes, potatoes, chickens, hill sheep, milling wheat or malting barley’.

 

Here in Ireland the situation the situation was similar. The Irish state had to be contented with the prices that the open market in U.K. and abroad were willing to offer, with the result that the Irish government had to try and make – up the difference in order to keep farming viable. Those of us old enough to be able to remember the Emergency and from the countryside, can still envisage the horses drawn reaper and binder, the reeks of corn in the haggard, the Steam Engine, the Threshing Machine and the Straw Elevator coming to the thresh(thrash) the corn, the manipulating of the thresher into place, because the reek of shaves at either side left (like a narrow street) with just enough room for it to fit,  the throwing of someone into the chaff, the drawing of oats on the men’s back up the steps of the grain loft and the drinking of porter from the barrel and the men sitting at the big tables were happy times. The ‘hit song’ of the time still rings in ears: But then for our parents the yield of grain, the possibility of a broken harvest must have been a terrible worry, particularly if they had to have over one third of the farm under wheat by Government regulation. The long wait before the crop was harvested. The bawn field that had last been ploughed 100 years previously, the meeting of the sock of the plough with an iron pan (fool’s gold) as it used to be known as, because of the speckled gold-like colour coming through it, the horse drawn zig zag harrow to cultivate the ploughed ground, the adding of a sprinkle of tar to prevent the crows from eating the seed at sowing time, the sowing of the seed with the horse drawn seed sower, the spreading of fertilizer  by hand, the waiting of the corn to ripen, while praying that it would not lodge and that the weather would hold-up. The horse fly invariably got ready to drive the horses crazy. If the corn lodged – the mowing machine and scythe and hand binding instead of the reaper and binder had to be called into play. The last day of the harvesting of the corn the casual workmen had a sing song session, which the chorus still rings in my ears, particularly in the latter years:

 

South of the border,down Mexico way —

That’s where I fell in love, where the stars above came out to play.

And now as I wander my thoughts ever stray

South of the border,down Mexico way.

 

But then behold a Gascoigne two bucket milking machine had arrived and another rural job had gone. The vacuum for the milking, was created by a one horse power TVO/Petrol engine as electricity was not as yet in the parish 1947 nor in most parts of rural Ireland.  Meanwhile in the cow house the milking of the cows by hand – where  a good man was capable of milking seven to eight cows was now being replaced by the milking machine. John Healy in his Book Nineteen acres had this to say about the displacement of rural workers with technology, writing about Mayo in 1930s’: The rusted reaping hook (sickle) was the last of the old technology: it had been the basic implement for centuries. It was slow work but it predicted sharing. It produced the Meitheal and all that sprang from the meitheal. The scythe replaced it. The scythe halved the meitheal in numbers as it cut meadows and oatfields in half the time. And then before we had adjusted to the change, the horse-drawn mowing machine slashed the necessity for the meitheal and the men of the meitheal even further. Padraig Regan and his horse would team-up with Jim O’Donnell and his horse and mowing machine and they’d do in half a day what a meitheal of scythes would take two two days to take out. …………We didn’t miss the young men in their going or the young women who went after them: we thought  when the first tractor  came to the village and bullied its way into small meadows and did it in an hour what it took two men and a pair of horses half a day to do, it was a great and efficient machine. ……………………………….The tractor cut wide swathes in our already fast-dwindling population. It cut out Padraig Regan and his horse pairing up with Jim O’Donnell and his horse for the spring ploughing and summer hay cutting. It cut out the meitheal of carts drawing turf from the bog and hay and oats into the reeks and hayshed. ………………….In forty years of rapid technological change, the Jim O’Donnell’s learned how to master the new technology but never realized, no more than our political leaders, that every new technology exacts a price in the social as well as the economics organization of our people’.

 

The driving of cattle to the local fair at three o’clock in the morning, the meeting of jobbers, two – three miles out from the town and asking ‘how much do want those skin and bone animals’, the driving of the cattle to the local train station to be whisked off to Cahir, Clare or wherever or the possibility having to drive them back again that long journey of eight miles. Almost everyone for the previous 300 years or more had been affected by the local fair. The parish priest might wish to buy a cow, the children often got a holiday, and the tinker had a supply of tinware to sell. The Co-op marts arrived in the early fifties and more rural labourers had to leave our shores. They were established usually on the outskirts of towns. But now only a few of the old horse fairs remain – such as Cahermee and Ballinasloe. This change took place without anybody realizing what a difference it would make. 

 

       And then the Combine harvester had come to the parish and these type of jobs were gone forever. The following day these sixteen year olds to twenty five year olds were leaving for Camden Town, Kentish Town or maybe Dagenham or wherever.  : In their last local get-together  one of the songs sang was:

 

CHORUS:
Tonight is our last night together,
For the nearest and dearest must part.
A soldier may roam to the ends of the world,
With his thoughts on his loving sweetheart.

 

 

The Emergency 1939 – 1945

The Emergency 1939 – 1945

Ireland was still very dependent on our nearest neighbour and it was hoped that the politicians would remain in good terms with them. Britain in turn had to do a bow turn, it had a large population to feed and supplies from abroad had suddenly become uncertain. The Second World War was a prosperous time for its farmers and farm labourers. According to Newby, ‘the need to expand agriculture almost at any cost was not only a wartime imperative but was given a added piquancy by Britain’s reliance on imported food, following decades of free trade agricultural policy. The intervention in agriculture was certainly the most urgent and in many respects the most far-reaching manifestation of the state’s new role in the countryside, but it was by no means the only element of rural reconstruction to be undertaken. ……………..Henceforth rural Britain was to be fashioned, controlled and administered through public policies, influenced albeit by familiar hierarchy of farmers and landowners. Nevertheless these policies were to emanate from Westminster, Whitehall and – much later – Brussels. The whole pattern of farming was drastically changed: neglected and derelict land was reclaimed, large numbers of livestock were slaughtered in order to save on feedstuffs, and a record acreage of land was placed under the plough. Compulsory cropping orders were issued and mechanization was enforced using a system of local tractor stations borrowed from Lenin’s New Economic Policy in the Soviet Union. Since Britain’s Ministry had virtually no field officers of its own and thus was ill-prepared to offer detailed advice or to safeguard the efficient use of government resources at local level – the Ministry created WAR Agricultural Executive Committees, or ‘War Ags’ as they were dubbed, drawn primarily from land commissioners, county advisory staff and university personnel, leavened by local exemplary local farmers and landowners. The War Ags issued advice, issued cultivation directions and allocated scarce resources such as fertilizers, feedstuffs and machinery. The intervention of the War Ags, into what previously regarded as the farmer’s own business was helped by the fact they also channeled grant aid and subsidies. British public opinion of agriculture also changed during the War, on the basis of renewed awareness of its strategic position.

For Ireland during the Second World War, James Meenan commented ‘The picture of Neutral Ireland waxing prosperous on wartime prices is therefore misleading’. Raymond Crotty gave the war years scant attention, because in his opinion, ‘they left no permanent imprint on Irish Agriculture. Farmers fared out reasonably well in comparison to other sections of Irish society according to Crotty. According to Cullen our exports halved between 1938 and 1943 in sharp contrast to the First World War. In 1945 net agricultural output, which is a close approximation to income from farming, was 16.8 per cent higher than in 1938/39. ……………………..and most of this was due to an expansion in tillage. However, these figures according to Cullen,and Daly ‘were very influenced by underinvestment in agriculture,   and that the U.K. had continued to subsidise their own farmers to produce the maximum amount from their land’. Furthermore Northern Ireland farmers were able to enjoy the subsidies and markets that the farmers in the South were excluded from.

The level of output obtained during the war years could only be held for relatively short period, and at a later date additional investment in the form of fertilizer and equipment would be necessary to make good the neglect or under investment of the war years’. Although the British market offered no wartime bonanza, Ireland’s enforced self-sufficiency gave farmers the security of guaranteed price and a guarantee for most commodities. Politically farmers became more astute, in the form of deputations, delegations and resolutions. As result there were occasional allegations by the government and civil servants that farmers were furthering their own interests at national expense. 

The Emergency got its name from the 1939 Emergency Powers Act, which enabled government to make emergency order covering almost any matter, without going the time-consuming process of enacting legislation in the Oireachtas. During 1942 and 1943, for example, emergency powers orders were introduced to ensure the equitable distribution of fertilizer among farmers. Propaganda was an important aspect, which included Radio broadcasts, ministerial speeches (read on the newspapers), advertisements, emphasized neutrality and the survival of the nation was dependent on the ability of farmers to provide sufficient food. Posters at railway stations, creameries and schools urged farmers to till more land. ‘More and More Wheat’ was one of the slogans. The Great Famine references were used as a prod. Daniel Twomey secretary of the Department of Agriculture in a letter to the clergy remarked. ‘It would be tragic if, in view of the natural resources available, we failed to provide the means of feeding the people, and as a consequence had to face a repetition of the hardship endured during the forties in the last century’.  In April 1944 de Valera commented that although conditions were serious, he did not expect them to deteriorate to the level of Bengal, China, or in Ireland a century earlier.

The wheat output during the war increased from 255,300 tons in 1939 to 573,050 tons in 1945 an increase of 124 per cent, while acreage increased from 255,280 acres in 1939 to 662,498 acres in 1945. Wheat was essential for the national survival. For 1940/1 season the compulsory tillage order was extended from 12.5 per cent of the arable land to 20 per cent requiring to be tilled for all holdings greater than ten acres. The objective was to supply 50 per cent of flour from native wheat. The wheat growers were to be given 35s a barrel of wheat produced. In 1942/3 when prospects of imports appeared bleak, the quota was raised to 25 per cent of the land as the prospects of supply from a broad appeared bleak; Corry of Irish Sugar Beet Growers Association and a T.D. for East Cork gave helping hand by forcing through an increase per barrel of wheat of government subsidy to 50s per barrel. The percentage of land that had to be devoted to wheat increased to 37.5 per cent for the following year. In September 1943 the Department of Supplies recommended that flour-millers include 7% barley in the manufacture of flour as they expected that imports would not be sufficient. Also the Cabinet reduced beer exports by 50% in order to preserve supplies of barley. In 1939 the Department of Agriculture estimated that 65,000 acres of sugar beet would  be necessary to provide self-sufficiency. This figure was substantially exceeded for four of the War years. It was grown under contract to the factories.

The Economic War and its Aftermath:

In 1932 Fianna Fail-Labour government came into power and embarked on a radical change in economic policy. The government decided to suspend payment of the annuities owed to Britain under the Land Purchase Acts of 1903. This was part of its programme for government as well as self-sufficiency both in agricultural and industrial produce. Immediately, in retaliation, Britain imposed ad valorem duties of 20 per cent (later increased to 40 per cent) on most imports from Ireland. The Free State government introduced tariffs and quotas on a wide range of manufactured goods, including farm machinery. It banned the import of coal from Britain, hence the cant ‘burn everything British except its coal’. Farmers were encouraged to reduce their reliance on raising cattle for the British market and to concentrate instead on the domestic one. In future it was hoped that most Irish sugar would be produced from Irish sugar-beet; that up to fifty percent of Irish flour would be derived from Irish wheat; and that pigs and poultry would be fattened on home grown-grown barley and oats instead of imported maize. The new policy altered the role of the Dept of Agriculture and the relationship between farmers and the state. The Cumann na Gael (FineGael) government had supported the DATI-IAOS programme of  advice and education on improving the quality and marketing of Irish products. Now the emphasis changed to price stabilization, bounties and compensation payments, subsidies to domestic producers, and measures designed to achieve the government’s self sufficiency programme. The so called ‘economic war’ was responsible for a sharper fall in agricultural prices and for a more belated recovery than would have been warranted by the simple operation of international market conditions. Some 50 per cent of output before 1932 was exported. By the second third of the decade only a third of the output was exported. With the decline of exports Government policy was implemented with even more vigour. This policy was spear-headed by the key new Dept in government of Industry and Commerce with Sean Lemass as Minister. On the other hand the Minister for Agriculture lost a lot of his power, which was headed up by James Ryan, a farmer’s son and qualified medical doctor from Wexford. Manufacturing commanded greater importance, particularly when these interests did not coincide with agriculture. Britain’s policy for the 1930s’ had changed and took steps to reduce imports of agricultural produce that could be produce by British farmers. Commonwealth countries like Canada had to agree to a ‘voluntary’ reduction of shipments of live cattle. Denmark and Holland also experienced a decline in the volume and value to Britain. In that first year Lemass also presented de Valera with a number of more radical proposals. According to Daly he proposed setting of Marketing Boards as in the U.K.; referring to the sharp fall that had taken place for agricultural exports and emphasized that it had nothing to do with British tariffs  ref: s 6274 Economic Committee. ………In his opinion the collapse in livestock prices had destroyed any realistic prospect of developing tillage. ………………………Consequently self-sufficiency would inflict further damage on the Irish livestock industry. Lemass claimed that although, wheat was not dependent on a healthy livestock trade, that it would nevertheless necessary to offer a subsidy amounting to £4 per acre, which was greater than the wages paid and profits earned per acre. ………………………He recommended reducing agricultural output to the quantity that was necessary to meet the needs of the Irish people, together what would be exported at a profit, or even at a loss, in order to pay for essential imports. Farmers and farm workers not needed to produce essential food should be taken off the land and employed in public works. ………………….Export bounties should cease, with the money being used to subsidize food prices. Untenanted land should be subdivided into five-acre plots and given to labourers. Lemass must obviously have been impressed with Neville Chamberlain’s socialist programme for the 1885 British election.

Daly goes on to say ‘it is unclear whether Lemass intended these “revolutionary” proposals to implemented; they may very well have been to scare the Cabinet into abandoning the Economic War……………………. “until we are in a better position to fight it” and attempting to negotiate a secure market in Britain for Irish agricultural produce. On this, at least, it seems probable that the Department would have agreed. The Department of Agriculture does not seemed to have responded directly to Lemass revolutionary proposals,………………………..J.J. McElligott of the Dept of Finance ………………………..it was unquestionably better “for the full advantage to be taken of our natural agricultural resources than that people should be maintained in idleness and lands and farms allowed to become derelict”. Various arguments appeared to have gone on behind the scenes, particularly between Ryan’s and Lemass’s Depts. Lemass wanted Marketing boards under his Department, whereas Ryan’s Dept of Agriculture and the DATI personnel felt differently as it was dependent on half of what was produced by farmers to be exported and mainly to Britain. And in the case of Livestock farming, some five sixth’s of its output in 1929/30 was exported and mainly to Britain.  The Department of Agriculture personnel would have appeared to have had the expertise in these matters. Lemass viewpoint would have seemed to have come out in top because as a temporary compromise the Dept of External Affairs saw after exports. New markets were sought in Germany and Belgium providing for exports of cattle, butter, and eggs in return for Ireland importing coal. According to Daly even some efforts to secure alternative markets were regarded as foolhardy, or desperate, such as the attempt to strike a deal with Poland, which was a major agricultural exporter.

  According to Patrick J. Sammon in his book “In the Land Commission – A Memoir 1933-1938” ‘Landless people came into their own, following the coming to power of the Fianna Fail Government in 1932. ….. For the eight year period from 1934 to 1942 it emerges …. That a total area in the order of 80,000 acres could well have been allotted to 2,750 landless applicants – each farm containing twenty seven acres of good land or equivalent’. Mr. Sammon goes on to write in another part of his book: ‘While the “Big Houses” of the landed gentry had flourished, they provided employment for gardeners, grooms, estate agents and the like …… offsetting these losses of employment opportunities is the security and freedom from want conferred on the former employees who secured compensation from the Land Commission following the acquisition of the Estate in the shape of holdings and parcels of land’. All this was taking place when most farmers in Ireland were losing money. It may have been a wiser policy for the land Commission to act as a landlord, leasing out the land like the local Co. Councils in Britain, and still continue to do. However, the thinking of the time, particularly by Fianna Fail is well expressed by Sammon when he writes: ‘ The sociological impact of the elimination of the Landlord Class offers scope for much interesting study. As a class, the landlords had acted badly by the tenants: it is not as if a cadre of benevolent landowners, who had functioned as leaders of the people, had been displaced. Successors of the original planters in most cases left no great void in the Irish scene’. Other opinion would say that, the state could very well have acted in a similar fashion as the “Good Landlords” had done before the Land Acts had been passed. A Land Commission based leasing system would have been more of a guardian for the new farmers, who in most cases lacked the skills of operating a business, farming education, money, etc. These were not the farmers, who were contacting the local agricultural and technical service; it was their neighbours who invariably had a much bigger farms. The farming system that has developed since the land Acts, has now resulted in 85 per cent of our farm production coming from fifteen per cent of the farms. A State leasing of land scheme would surely have given us a more balanced system of production.     

In the meantime going back to the 1930s, several committees were set-up by the Government to try an alleviate the farming crisis and while Irish livestock farmers were suffering badly, stories of farmers bringing cattle home from the monthly fair because the price was too low, having to sell them at the following month’s fair at half the price, were experienced throughout the Twenty Six Counties. Ryan complained about the substantial assistance given to industrialist with less generous treatment to farmers and insisted that the specific circumstances of farming were not given sufficient weight in the formulation of economic policy. He appealed for an increase in the export bounty for cattle, sheep and horses, should be quadrupled, but he also acknowledged that this would be an impossibility. In July 1934 the Cabinet decided after a Department of Agriculture proposal, that a ‘free beef scheme’, for all recipients of unemployment and home assistance be introduced until the end of 1936. Under the scheme each person that qualified got one and half pounds of meat per week. The scheme proved to be extremely popular. Men who received unemployment assistance refused to take jobs on relief works because they would forfeit their entitlement to free beef. Daniel Twomey, secretary to the Department of Agriculture, told the Banking Commission, ‘There are very large numbers of people in this country who were formerly on bread and tea line and who are now eating meat at least once per day’.  However, the high cost remained a problem. In January 1934, when the crisis of the livestock was most acute, the Department of Agriculture began to explore the possibility of buying diseased animals, and cows with poor milk yields for conversion to meat meal; as newspapers carried reports of dead livestock left lying in fields and cattle being killed in public places. By May 1934 the Department Robert Briscoe a Fianna Fail T.D., a cattle exporter Con Crowley and a German businessman negotiated the building of a Meat Plant at Roscrea – the state providing 75 per cent of the cost – up to £16,000, in return for receiving preference shares. The Department of agriculture paid £2.10s for each animal and arranged for the animals to be transported to Roscrea at the Department’s expense. In 1936, 45,000 animals were brought in under the scheme.  Another plant was opened up in Waterford to process young animals from south Munster. This one was in conjunction with Irish Co-Operative Meats Limited (Later known as Clover Meats). The C-Op agreed to provide a premises, equipment, and working capital for a ten year monopoly of the sale of canned meat and meat extract in Ireland. The plant would purchase cattle from the Department at 10s a cwt; the Department would pay farmers 16 s a cwt and would pay the cost of transport.  In December 1934, Britain and Ireland had a ‘Coal-Cattle’ pact, whereby the Free State would buy a certain amount of British coal for their buying a certain amount of its beef, whereby Irish cattle held in the U.K. for three months were entitled to a British subsidy.   In 1935 over 671,000 cattle were exported to Britain, compared with 511,000 for 1934. The value of those exports rose from £4.25 million to £5.36 million. The trade agreement with Britain in the spring of 1938 ended the Economic War. This brought a decided improvement in the market for agricultural exports; but that there would still be restrictions in relation to the volume of supply. The greatest benefit went to the livestock trade and it increased to £10 million and by 50 per cent by 1940 over the 1938 figures. One wonders if it would not have saved money to have had the Coal Pact and indeed the Trade Agreement before the above factories were negotiated. Or not to have started an economic war that one had no hope of winning

One More Cow, One More Sow, One More Acre under the Plough

For better or worse the treaty between the Free State and Britain was accepted and the terms were presented to Dail Eireann on the 14 December 1921 and the final vote was taken on the second session on 7 January 1922. The Dail under  W.T. Cosgrave as Taoiseach, Patrick Hogan was appointed Minister for Agriculture in the provisional government, which was ratified by Dail Eireann on 28 February 1922. Hogan was born in Kilrick, Co. Galway, the son of a prominent farmer, who was a senior inspector with the Land Commission.  He qualified as a solicitor, but had always a great interest in Agriculture and had read many of the leaflets issued by DATI.  He was more in sympathy with the larger commercial farmers who produced the bulk of the exports, than with the small farmers. This was to the annoyance of Eamon de Valera’s party, who withdrew from the Dail until the Autumn of 1927. Hogan told the Dail that the Agricultural Credit Corporation (ACC) was not intended to help ‘down and outs’ but those with security. Hogan, according to Daly succeeded in getting his message across because he closely followed the path DATI had mapped beginning prior to 1914. Dail Eireann and the Irish government gave priority to legislation relating to agriculture. Like Plunkett, Hogan believed strongly in co-operation rather than direct state aid and during his time as Minister, the Department provided substantial funding for the co-operative movement. Hogan wished to help the farmer to help himself, an objective almost identical with the one set out by Plunkett in the first annual report of DATI.   During 1921 and 1922 agricultural prices continued to fall.
In Britain the price of wheat was halved in six months and farmers in both countries began to cut costs, reducing the area under cultivation and shedding workers in their thousands. Without the benefit of price supports, agriculture was once more at the mercy of market forces. The depression returned once more. A British government White Paper in 1926 was to reaffirm free trade and to urge farmers once more to switch from cereals to livestock and dairy production, taking advantage of the cheaper cereals now available because of low cereal prices. Following the ‘Great Crash’ of 1929, economic depression was to hit the whole of the Western world. Price guarantees were re-introduced under the Wheat Act of 1932, and the Cattle Industry  (Emergency Provision) Act 1934. Marketing boards were put in place after Agricultural Marketing Act 1933. Agricultural prices had declined by 20 per cent between 1929 and 1930, and then by a further 16 per cent between 1931 and 1933. This time it affected the livestock farmer as well as the cereal grower.
Our own Minister for Agriculture set out priorities under four headings:
·         Establishing standards and a national brand for butter, bacon and eggs export;
·         Developing a livestock policy that would produce milch cows and pigs of quality equal to or better than the best Danish animals, while giving ‘fair play’ to the beef trade;
·         Improving the facilities for agricultural education; and
·         Reorganizing the Department of agriculture so as to make it an efficient instrument to administer these programmes.
Assessments of Hogan’s contribution to Irish Agriculture have benefited by his early death and the fact that his term in office covered a period of civil war, land wars, the IAOS debacle, farmers financial difficulties after the hyped prices during the First world War, and finally the Great Crash of 1929. The Sugar factories were set up during his time in office, which proved to be quite a good source of employment as well as farm earnings for the following seven decades that they survived. Notwithstanding, the slogan – one more cow, one more sow, one acre under the plough, there was no increase in the number of cows, while area under crops decreased by one fifth between 1922 and 1932. The urging of British farmers to switch to livestock farming and dairying cannot have helped because they would have taken over increased markets for those products. According to Professor Daly ‘Agriculture sic under Hogan, seemed to have had very few difficulties with Finance during these years because Hogan’s economic policy was close to the Finance position. Both Departments believed that Ireland was essentially an agricultural country, that the well-being of the Irish economy was dependent on agriculture; and in turn the best prospects for agriculture lay in increased exports to Britain. By 1931, however, these assumptions were being challenged by the collapse of agricultural prices and by Britain’s decision to abandon free trade in favour of protecting its agriculture’ after 1931.  Irish agriculture relied heavily on exports, with Britain being the major market.

The Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction

The Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction (DATI)

 

The Albert Agricultural College began life as the Glasnevin Model Farm in 1838 becoming the Albert National Agricultural Training Institution in 1853 after a visit by Prince Albert. The name Albert Agricultural College first appears in the 1902 Report of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction. Its foundation was an important event in the history of Irish agricultural education, whose primary function in its early years was the provision of instruction for primary school teachers to teach agriculture and meet the requirements set down by Board of National Education in Ireland. The Board was established in 1831 to create a nationwide system of primary education. By 1837 it had decided that agriculture should be taught in all its schools and therefore teachers would need training in modern farming methods and the provision of this instruction was the main purpose of the college during the first sixty years of its existence. The Board’s 1938 Report mentions the beginning of Glasnevin’s teaching responsibilities and indicates also that from the earliest days, the Albert College also taught those who wished to make a career in agriculture.

The Board extended its policy of primary-level agricultural education by establishing twenty Model Agricultural Schools and provided many National Schools with small holdings or gardens. There were forty-seven of these Ordinary Agricultural Schools by 1859. From 1850 the Board adopted a policy of teaching agriculture in the workhouse schools and by 1859 lessons in agriculture was being given in fifty-nine workhouse schools. Despite its success, the Board met opposition from members of all religious denominations as one of its aims was to establish non-denominational education and various accommodations had to be made. However, no accommodation was possible with the prevalent laissez-faire economic policies. The Liverpool Financial Reform Association attacked the use of public money for agricultural education, and in parliament, Liberal MPs and several Chief Secretaries opposed the Board’s policies. The Board was forced to discontinue support for the workhouse schools in 1863 and in 1874 disposed of most of the model farms. The Albert Agricultural College survived, probably because it was not exclusively concerned with the Board’s educational policies (the Board’s own inspectors reported that both textbooks and teaching skills were inadequate)—it also carried out research work in new crop varieties, farming methods and breeding livestock. From the 1870s, valuable work was being carried out in the college in experimenting with new crop varieties and new farming methods, and in improving breed of livestock, especially pigs. In 1890 the college pioneered the use in Ireland of a French method of treating fungal infection. This turned out to be the first successful treatment for potato blight.

An 1896 report by the “Recess Committee” stated that big increases in agricultural production could be achieved by Organisation, Representation, and Education of the farming population. The Recess Committee was an unofficial committee organized, and chaired by Sir Horace Plunkett and composed of prominent Irishmen of all political and religious persuasions. Its function was to consider a wide range of matters concerned with Ireland’s economic and social future. The Agricultural and Technical Instruction Act, 1899, was passed as a result of this report. The Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction [DATI], which began work in 1900, determined that the problems with the development of agriculture in Ireland would be better addressed through higher education and a Faculty of Education was established at the College of Science. Most of the teaching was carried out in the Albert Agricultural College and the college continued to teach courses of its own as well. Many of the students at the Faculty had first completed one of the college’s own courses. Peripatetic instructors were considered particularly important, and, by 1913–14, 175 of these had been trained by the Faculty. Further Agricultural training courses were offered by University College Cork from when it was established in 1845. However, the Agricultural Department ceased to exist in 1868. According to Professor John A. Murphy the course on offer was ‘theoretical dilettantish and at best availed of by small numbers of prospective managers’.  

DATI began to appoint Agricultural Instructors around the country in the County Committees of Agriculture and Technical Instruction under Local Government Act of 1898, to both teach and demonstrate the science of food production.  All counties complied and raised the rate to finance it. Plunkett described the agricultural instructor as ‘the guide and friend of the existing farmers’ County Tyrone was the first to appoint an itinerant instructor in agriculture and a poultry instructress. Later problems arose as DATI brought in a rule that all instructors appointed had to be from outside the relevant county. The IAOS were also getting substantial funding while Plunkett was Vice President of DATI, however when T.W. Russell took over from Plunkett, he recommended that DATI should phase out the subsidy to the IAOS by 1910. In his opening address to the Council of Agriculture on 19 November 1907, Russell described the existing arrangement between DATI and the IAOS as ‘the most unbusiness-like arrangement I have ever heard of’. He also accused the IAOS of setting out to create shopkeepers. Plunkett had resumed the presidency of the IAOS and he used his presidential address in Dec 1907 to launch an attack on ‘gombeen’ men and their political supporters. A major political row followed and Russell had the last word, he got the DATI board to confirm a £3,000 subsidy to the IAOS and that a monthly audit had to be carried out on its spending by DATI and that this would be the final grant to it. The matter continue to fester:  When the IAOS applied to the Development Commission for a grant of £6,000 in 1911. Russell contended that DATI should be responsible for developing co-operation, and he launched bitter attack on Plunkett and the IAOS, rehearsing the events of 1907/08 at considerable length. (Ref: The First Dept by Mary E. Daly). The row continued in 1911 when the IAOS objected to a key clause in DATI’s Dairying Industry Bill, which was designed to ensure the quality of Irish butter exports……………………………… The growing antagonism between DATI and IAOS and the withdrawal of subsidies are often regarded as triumph of evil over good, with the Irish Parliamentary Party and its allies, the gombeen men, triumphing over the noble and interested people who wished to improve the lot of Irish farmers. This according to Daly is too simplistic. Despite trumpeting the merits of self-help, the co-operative movement relied heavily on DATI’s money. ……………………….the IAOS were not good at reporting in comparison to the Committees of Agriculture, there was not a place for two bodies acting separately i.e. the local Itinerant Instructor and the IAOS Organiser-Instructor. Russell emphasized that DATI was responsible to Parliament, whereas the IAOS was an ‘irresponsible body’. Village shops had become more numerous in the second half of 1800s’. They were sometimes situated beside the post office whose role was itself a pointer to changing times. It was part of the changing improvement in living standards, however, it was also a shift in being less self sufficient. With increasing mobility, the bicycle, the pony and trap, the towns with a much larger selection of goods became more accessible. The Co-op creameries also put in shops, selling a fairly wide range of farmer requirements.  

There was modest improvement of Irish Agriculture for the years leading up to the First World War. Poultry was one sector that improved thanks to DATI. By then Ireland became the largest exporter of eggs to Britain. On the eve of the War poultry accounted for nine percent of agricultural output compared with 5-6 percent in the 1880s’/90s’. Instructresses trained in the Munster Institute (MI)-Cork city suburbs, under DATI control, advised the farm women. They also insured that the eggs were clean leaving the farm. In 1907 DATI employed an instructor in the packaging and grading of eggs and poultry and made his service available to shippers. Irish dairy cow numbers stayed static, as did the average milk yield, while the home consumption of butter increased, because more families now switched to bread and less maize and oatmeal was consumed. On the eve of the war just thirty nine percent of Irish butter was produced in creameries. According to Daly ‘it was quite possible that the dairy industry was a casualty of the division of labour and the disagreement between DATI and the IAOS.  The DATI’s concentration on beef cattle may also have been a contributing factor’. The DATI investigated the possibilities of establishing a dead meat trade and its London Office worked on the promotion of Irish fruit and early potatoes.

By 1920 agricultural prices were approximately three times higher than they were in 1913 figure. War brought unprecedented government regulation – compulsory tillage orders, guaranteed prices for grain, maximum prices for fertilizer, minimum wages orders and perhaps the temporary suspension of land purchase and distribution. Although farmers benefited from higher prices, labourers and smallholders felt frustrated at being denied their share of wartime prosperity. Emigration came to a halt because it was extremely difficult to get to the United States and the fear of conscription if they entered Britain. A volatile atmosphere resulted particularly after the 1916 rising. Wages ran behind food prices and labourers went on strike in Cos’ Clare, Cork, Kildare, Louth, Meath and Wexford. Moribund rural land and labour unions were revived and new organizations emerged, demanding minimum wages for farm labourers, the redistribution of land to smallholders and the provision of allotments. Men were entering grazing land, driving cattle away, and ploughing or digging land for tillage – using compulsory tillage orders as justification for their actions. In other instances they disrupted auctions for conacre land. They were fuelled by economic conditions but also by militant nationalism. On the 13th November, two days after the Armitice, the Council of Agriculture debated a motion calling for labourers wages to be linked to maximum grain prices. However this was not carried The Irish Transport and General worker Union (ITGWU) launched a campaign for higher agricultural wages in 1919 and succeeded in bringing labourers out on strike in Meath and Kildare and there was a threat of a nationwide strike if Kildare farmers persisted in their plan to lock out all agricultural labourers unless they returned to work.

On March 1919  senior officials of DATI met a deputation of farmers who were demanding an end to compulsory tillage; the deputation included two representatives of North Kildare Farmers’ Federation, the Clare landlord and maverick Colonel O’Callaghan Westropp (An estate of over 8,000 acres in 1876) and farmers from Meath, Cork and Wexford. Devere, a large farmer from North Kildare, commented that the tillage order was ‘one great weapon’ that labourers could employ against farmers. During the previous summer he had been unable to harvest thousands of acres of corn when his labourers went on strike; he objected to the fact that farmers were compelled to till their land, while labourers were free to strike and ‘to demand whatever wages they liked’. When Gill – the Secretary reminded the deputation that Irish Farmers were receiving higher guaranteed prices than farmers in Britain, O’Callaghan Westopp countered, that guaranteed prices were worthless unless farmers had a guaranteed market,  guaranteed labour and a guaranteed season to harvest the crops. By March 11 1919 the British Ministry of Food conceded that while, the case for decontrolling the price of oats in Britain was ‘irresistible’, in Ireland, ‘the conditions are rather different’, and it agreed to honour its undertaking to buy 10,000 tons of oats a month in Ireland at the previously-announced price until July 1919. It also agreed to restrict exports of British oats and oatmeal into Ireland Compulsory tillage still applied for the 1920 season, but early in 1921 the DATI revoked it. It had become apparent that Irish farmers would no longer benefit from the guaranteed prices paid under the Agricultural Act of 1920, following the enactment of the Government of Ireland Act in the same year (establishing parliaments in Dublin and Belfast). The Agricultural Wages board was abolished in October 1921. From 1919 there were two Government Authorities for Agriculture namely the Ministry of Agriculture for Northern Ireland and DATI for the Twenty Six Counties – later to become Republic of Ireland. The two organizations pretty well worked together in the earlier years as many of the staff of the existing DATI had worked in the old DATI in Dublin.

 

The Demise of Natural Cures

The Study of Plant & Animal Life and the Demise of Natural Cures: While the Irish were busy getting out of Ireland sophisticated people in Europe got involved in more of country life. They began the study of plants and animals. Earlier classification of plant and animal life was according to its usefulness.  European Botanist embarked on an ambitious attempt to classify the whole plant world in order. The listed them according to their structural characteristics. Most of the classifications were ‘artificial’ in the sense that they arbitrarily concentrated on external visible features e.g. leaves, or fruit or flower, instead of attempting a natural classification based on the overall similarities between plants. In Zoology a form of classification had already been initiated by Aristotle many years earlier. All this led people away from using plants for natural cures. Furthermore, traditional husbandry tended to be regarded as archaic. Prior to this Piseog was rife in Rural and Urban England, but was now challenged by Science. This was further helped by Protestantism because most of the earlier natural beliefs dated back to Roman Catholicism or paganism. Such things as Holly, hung up at Christmas were regarded as paganism.  The introduction of Latin names for animal and plant species further widened the gap between the popular and learned way of looking at things. ‘Those who wish to remain ignorant of the Latin names’ said John Berkenhout in 1789 ‘Have no business with the study of botany’. The conviction that animals and vegetation had religious or symbolic meaning for men had no longer the support of the intellectuals. The educated were now coming to believe that the natural world had its own independent existence and was to be perceived accordingly. This was a return to the separation of human society from nature which had been pioneered by Ancient Greek Atomists Leucippus and Democritus.

The citified Englishman along with his/her European counterparts became exceptionally carnivorous in comparison to the vegetable eating people of the East ref: William Arnold Common Expositor (1948). This was particularly so in England where the ratio of domestic beasts per acre and per man were higher than any other country with the exception of the Netherlands ref: Andrew Willet, Hexapla in Genesis (Cambridge 1605). From the 16th to the 18th century, accordingly, the roast beef of England was a National Symbol – History of Robins. Meanwhile, Science and Economics had a major influence on the situation. Followed on from this was the classification of both plant and animal life. The animals that may be eaten and not eaten were classified. The most acceptable to the elite Englishman was vegetarian feeding on grass, berries, whereas the carnivorous tended to be rejected. The eating of the horse became acceptable in France but was a no, for the British.  Pets were taboo as were frogs, snails, mushrooms and oysters as they grew and developed from the excrement of the earth. The behaviour of the French and the Italians towards these commodities was an enduring subject of contemptuous comment. The sleeping with animals was defined. Privileged species were classified as: Horse, Hawk, Dog, Cat, Robin. The pet was allowed into the house, was given a personal name and were not eaten. According to Keith Thomas, it was against this background of pet keeping that “we should view the growing tendency in the early modern period for scientists and intellectuals to break down the rigid boundaries between animals and man which earlier theorists had tried to raise”. The ascendancy of man over the natural world was still an aim of most people by 1800, but it was no longer unquestioned matter by urban English society.  By 1851 the majority of the English population lived in either cities or towns. The dialogue now became ‘that a gentleman brought up in a town was more civilized than one reared in the country’. The town according Thomas was the home of learning, manners, taste and sophistication. It was the arena of human fulfilment. Adam had been placed in a garden, and Paradise was associated with flowers and fountains. However, these views to a certain extent were to change, smog, closeness to others, an escape from urban vices, dirt, noise and a rest from strains of business gave a longing for week-end travel to the countryside. Yet those who went to the country of their accord found that a weekend was long enough. ‘That brutal state called a country life’, as the Earl of Shaftesbury termed it, was too boring for urban sophisticates. Yet according to Thomas, ‘the growing rural sentiment reflected authentic longing which would steadily increase, both in volume and intensity, with the spread of cities and the growth of industry. This longing was expressed in an unprecedented volume of writings about nature and the countryside. The use of herbs in English and Irish High society was frowned on. Herbs had generated a vast lore about the healing properties of plants, to be transmitted orally or written down in the herbals which gained wider circulation with the birth of printing and continued to be published through the eighteenth century and beyond. According to Thomas, since 1652 there have been over a hundred editions of Culpeper’s Herbal alone, and it had scores of rivals. The Grete Herbal offered plant remedies for every complaint, superfluous facial hair to ‘stench of the armholes’. Countrywomen planted clary (salvia) for husband’s backaches. Solomon’s seal was recommended for bone fractures, lichen for tuberculosis, bindweed for cancer of the mouth. When cattle had the murrain, the husbandmen cut a hole in the beast’s ear and inserted a root of bearfoot. Whether in his family herbal on the cottage shelf or in the medicinal plants growing in the garden outside, the country-dweller demonstrated his practical knowledge and dependence of the plant world. All country-folk knew where to find plants with which to make ointments, laxatives, purgatives, narcotics or cures for warts and ringworm. By trial and error people identified the dangerous ones; the yew foliage and hemlock after earlier deaths were avoided.  Sir Walter Raleigh is reputed to have given a gift of potatoes to the Queen and the chef, knowing little about potatoes, threw out the actual potatoes and cooked the leaves and stems instead. The dishes were served and the guest became deathly ill. So did the habit of eating a much wider range of plants than we do today. Ultimately Botany and Zoology studies and application ended the role of natural cures in England but they were still very much used in Ireland up to the 1950s’.