Contractors expected to bear the bulk of efforts in curbing ammonia pollution have accepted the Government’s suggestion of phasing out splash plates on their machines provided it is matched by financial support. In a statement to the Irish Farmers Journal, the Association of Farm and Forestry Contractors in Ireland (FCI) said: “Ireland should follow the initiatives in Europe and agree a future end date with one year’s notice on the use of splash-plate slurry spreading systems.”

However, FCI president Richard White pointed out that the current TAMS II scheme is not accessible to contractors, which “does not ensure that these low-emission spreading machines are going into the hands of the operators, namely land-based contractors, who are carrying out the bulk of the slurry spreading on Irish farms”.

Under European 2030 targets, Ireland must bring its ammonia emissions 5% below 2005 levels. Nearly all of those emissions come from agriculture.

As cattle numbers expand, Teagasc estimates that the real effort to achieve EU targets will amount to a 12% cut in emissions. This translates to more than 10,000t of ammonia emissions to avoid every year.

Teagasc gas emissions researcher Gary Lanigan told the Irish Farmers Journal that equal contributions from greater use of protected urea as fertiliser and conversion of splash plates to low-emission slurry spreading would be sufficient to meet Ireland’s targets.

On the slurry front, his research shows that focusing on contractors would be the most cost-effective way of cutting emissions – or what’s called abatement. They spread around 10bn litres of slurry or 40% of Ireland’s volume each year. Upgrading their spreaders to technologies such as trailing shoes would cost €4,200/t of ammonia abated, while that cost could be up to 10 times higher if converting all farmers, Lanigan said.

Assuming half of the 10,000t to be abated would fall on contractors upgrading from splash plates, an Irish Farmers Journal calculation puts the potential cost to the industry at more than €20m.

The swivel spreader photographed in last week’s edition is different from the splash plates targeted by the proposed ban.