Watch: Minister admits year-on-year water comparison not correct measure

Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue has admitted that a year-on-year comparison of water quality is not the right way to measure trends.

However, he says his officials had little choice but to accept the condition of a mid-term review of these trends which was attached to the granting of Ireland’s nitrates derogation.

When asked by the Irish Farmers Journal this week if he was happy that a year-on-year comparison is the right way to measure water quality deterioration, he said: “No, I wouldn’t be.”

Negotiating

He said that when Ireland was negotiating the renewal of the derogation, 2021 water quality results were “very poor, much poorer than for a number of years before”.

“We now have clarity that the European Commission is not going to reopen the derogation negotiation agreed 18 months ago. I was seeking to bring a statutory amendment to it and hoping that we might be able to hold the 250kg to the end of this derogation period up to 2025.”

While the minister acknowledges that Ireland’s grass-based system is very different to other EU countries he doesn’t accept that Ireland is getting a harsh deal from the EU.

“No, I’m not imposing a stocking rate limit. It’s what we are securing as part of the derogation from the [European] Commission and it’s the Commission that has the discretion and other member states have the discretion, to do this.

“It’s very much part of the architecture of how the Commission approaches these things. We were at 250kg and now required to go to 220kg. Denmark is at 230kg and has been at 230kg for a while. Holland is mixture of 220kg and 240kg,” he said. He also highlighted how, in Holland, the derogation is going to be phased out, dropping to 170kg in the coming years.

Change how we operate

When the Irish Farmers Journal challenged the minister that this will force farmers to change how they produce milk and push them into a more intensive system that has been shown to be negative to nitrate levels, he disagreed with the point.

“We can’t have that, Jack. We have to work to ensure we hold the derogation.

“This experience, and the difficulty of the negotiation we went through last year, shows the challenge we have. It shows the need for us all to work collaboratively and to take collective actions to see reductions in nitrates in water and that is very complex.

“But I’m very confident we can put the conditions in place that can improve water quality and put us in a situation where we are in a much stronger position than we were when renegotiating a new four-year derogation than we were the last time around.”

What economic assessment of a cut to 220kg has been done by the Department?

“I’ll be asking Teagasc to work with farmers and see how we support farmers to adjust in the best way possible. The challenge now is to hold that 220kg but also to look to see how we can work to support farmers in terms of the adjustment that is there to go from 250kg to 220kg.”

Teagasc has said that it could, potentially at the extreme, reduce profit by 30% on some of these farms?

“So, we’ve about 10% of total land area in derogation so there is another 90%.

"In some areas there is more tillage ground in the locality and more options. So, first [we will] work to see how we can support farmers so that we integrate the different sectors. An option here is to export and utilise slurry elsewhere and there is real untapped potential here.”

What areas will be impacted by this 220kg as we speak?

“I will be working with the water quality working group, established in May, in terms of engaging them with that and we need to bring clarity as soon as possible.”

In terms of clarity, certainty, and vision, if you were a dairy farmer looking to invest, what stocking rate would you be setting your farm up for?

[The minister admitted there is a “big, big challenge” to holding the derogation at the 220kg.] “I do believe if we can work together, and look at what we can improve, we can hold that 220kg but obviously that’s not fully within our control.”

When will dairy farmers know where they stand for 2023?

“I have my team working on that at the moment. I want to have that concluded in the next number of days – days not weeks – in relation to getting that data to farmers.”

Is the proposed cow reduction scheme still on the cards?

“The reduction scheme was proposed by Dairy Food Vision Group which involved all key stakeholders. Different views have come forward, in terms of the submissions from stakeholders and farm organisations, in relation to what that might look like. It was proposed in context of a climate measure and an overall emissions reduction.”

Farmers have taken on spreading reduced artificial nitrogen, banding, increased slurry storage, longer closed spreading periods and so on. Are you being fair to farmers in bringing a stocking rate reduction on top of all these other measures?

“I’m working as hard as I possibly can for farmers. We work in a European Union with common food standards and common environment standards for all citizens and all countries.

"We have a derogation on some of those standards. Working within these standards is more important to us than many other EU countries because we export the vast majority of this food to those other countries.

"We need access to European Union, the highest value markets, and it is crucially important to us to work to the same standard.”