Dublin Opinion

It’s been a busy couple of weeks. I have a two-month summer teaching contract, after which I’ll be visiting my post office on a weekly basis. At the same time I’m trying to get some research done, and so I’m snapping up stuff in the library after classes, and mulling over it as I walk back to Finglas by the banks of the canal.

Yesterday was interesting as I came across a report that tied in to my previous post about power relationships between small and large farmers in the Free State. It’s from the Commission on Agriculture’s final report, published in 1924. It’s talking about ranching and the eleven months system (land letting or conacre). Anyway, here’s the quote. I found it in the Journal of the Department of Lands and Agriculture Vol.24, no.1 (May 1924):

In actual practise, a country’s rural economy must be regarded as an interdependent whole, and not in the terms of holdings big and small. We received a considerable volume of evidence to show that the first class pasture lands play a proper and profitable part in the whole scheme of rural economy, in that they afford a market for the younger stock reared on the smaller farms, where they cannot be bought to maturity. We are of opinion that this is a matter deserving of full consideration. It may be argued that the small farmer, if he adopted stall-feeding and grew more feeding stuffs, might finish his own home-reared stock. whatever its virtues in theory, there are many practical difficulties in this proposal, not least being the innate conservatism of the farming mind, and its slowness to adopt, other than very gradually, any change, however beneficial. There is great risk in upsetting a known and accepted channel of trade without establishing something to take its place. We, therefore, recommend that any scheme involving the closer settlement of grass lands should have due regard to the market which these lands at present afford for the finishing of stock reared on poorer land and on smaller farms.” (p.16)

The report makes it clear that in its opinion agriculture in Ireland has to be seen as one, interlocking, system - an “interdependent whole”. Also, the practise of small farmers fattening cattle, which is then sold on to ranchers with “first-class pasture lands” should be continued in the interests of “the market,” and that any possible changes to Irish agricultural practises should keep in mind this “interdependent” relationship.

The commission was reacting to the idea of making small farms viable either through more efficient tillage, or though improving grass lands in order to allow small farmers fatten cattle themselves. It states quite clear that poor farming, in its opinion, benefits “the market”, and the present system should be left well alone.

According to Crotty and Tovey and Share, with regard to cattle farming, that’s pretty much what happened.