Edition Bobbett1. Texts by Elizabeth F. Bobbett: 1.1.3. Correspondence, Letters to newspapers

1939 Elizabeth Bobbett: Letter to the Connacht Tribune, 18.11.1939

Increased Prices1

We hear a good deal of talk about prices control and a Prices Commission, but like all other Commissions it begins and ends at talk plus expense on the taxpayers. The recent increase of 1½d per lb on sugar calls for some enlightenment on the sugar industry. During the past year whenever the farmers asked for derating of agricultural land, the politicians always voiced in loud tones – to give derating would mean that the price of sugar would have to be raised ½d a lb and they could not do that on the working man and the small farmer.

Last spring I believe the beet growers’ representatives pressed for an increase of 1/3d per lb on sugar so as to give the Irish farmer an increase of 6s 6d per ton on the beet crop, but this increase was refused. What has been the result? A decline of 9’000 acres under beet this season, and a decline of 30’000 acres under beet in the 1937/1938 season. I ask the general public to consider if this is good business, to build three additional sugar factories and then not give the farmer a remunerative price for this crop? Beet is a crop that gives a lot of employment on the land, to transport concerns, and to factory workers, so the decrease of almost 40’000 acres in the past few years has helped to increase unemployment.

Had the farmers’ just demands been acceded to, this sugar crisis would have been averted. How can the present increase in the price of flour and wheaten flour be justified when all the wheat imported since last June or July was bought at the lowest price for over 200 years on the international market? As there are only 25 barrels of home grown wheat used with every 75 barrels of imported wheat and as the Irish farmers have got no increase in price, it cannot be put down as helping agriculture. Members of the Irish Farmers’ Federation have constantly raised the question: what is it costing the country by not giving the farmers derating? The public must also remember that it is only by our exports, 95 per cent of which are agricultural exports, that money can be brought into this country; therefore the logical conclusion is that the farmers must be helped in every possible way to increase production and increase exports if the rest of the population of this country is to be provided for.

1 - Similar letters were published in the Wicklow People, 11.11.1939 and the Farmers’ Gazette, 11.11.1939.