Farmers must spread half of all slurry with trailing shoes earlier in the spring, replace 50% of CAN with protected urea and face tight monitoring of nitrogen movements under the Climate Action Plan unveiled by the Government this week.
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“Management of fertiliser is a critical issue,” said Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed. The plan’s most immediate actions include new “environmentally friendly” branding on selected fertilisers, research to rule out food residues from protected urea, and ramping up inclusion of more nutrient-efficient clover in grassland swards.
The Department will also prepare a recording system to track and police fertiliser movements
The midterm review of the nitrates derogation and the next application in two years’ time are now tied to climate action, with “a clear signal” on slurry and fertiliser efficiency looming for 2021. The Department will also prepare a recording system to track and police fertiliser movements.
While big upfront investments such as trailing shoes have received TAMS support, the minister expects farmers to fund other changes themselves. “Some of them are so abundantly clearly self-financing that the challenge is to get the information in a digestible format to farmers so that they make those informed economic decisions themselves,” he said.