The importance of the Nitrates Derogation in its current form to Irish agriculture was laid bare at a dairy seminar in Cork last week.

The Fine-tuning Irish Dairy event was opened by Fianna Fáil MEP Billy Kelleher, who said that dairy farmers will require an extra 30,000ha if they are to maintain cow numbers when the derogation drops to 220kg organic nitrogen/hectare, and that the threat of losing the derogation outright would have a “devastating impact” on dairy farms.

“Time is required for the mitigating actions, which have been adopted by dairy farmers, to have an effect on water quality in rivers, lakes and estuaries. This takes time and we haven’t been given this time,” he said.

Policy drip-feed

Kelleher also pointed out that the drip-feed of policy changes is causing huge uncertainty for dairy farmers and agribusinesses that support farmers.

He said that farmers are taking on debt in order to invest in their farms and comply with the new standards, but at the same time, policy is changing towards having fewer cows on farms, which means there will be less milk being produced in order to pay back the debt.

“We need policy that gives certainty to farmers and the agri-food sector, because if milk is going to be curtailed, the capital cost of producing milk goes through the roof. We need policy that enables farmers to plan ahead with confidence,” he said.

Nitrates

Continuing on the subject of Ireland’s derogation, TJ Flanagan, CEO of ICOS, said that there is a chance some measures could be put in place to head off the reduction in the derogation from 250kg to 220kg N/ha:

“The Department of Housing are the lead department in Ireland, but the derogation is a function of the European Commission.

“So, we have to persuade the Department of Agriculture that this is really worth fighting for, to get them to persuade the Department of Housing, so the latter can then put together a case that will persuade the Commission,” he said.

“What is the price that has to be paid in order to do that? We just need to be really careful. The report is coming in the next couple of days and our gut feeling is that it’s not going to be particularly positive towards us.

"As of now, the legal position is that we are likely to be at 220kg by 1 January and that’s a real challenge.”

More time needed

CEO of the National Dairy Council Zoe Kavanagh reiterated the point that more time is needed for the significant changes that have taken place on farm-level to have an impact in water quality results:

“We are gifted here in Ireland, with the perfect climate and the perfect set-up from nature with our grass-based system to produce dairy.

“There is no doubt that the activities on the ground, proven either through the Agricultural Sustainability Support and Advisory programme (ASSAP) or the water catchments programme, are yielding positive outcomes; but unfortunately, the true benefit of activity on the ground today probably won’t be seen for another two years,” Kavanagh said.

Biodiversity

TJ Flanagan said that there have already been lots of unintended consequences for the wider farming sector as a result of changes to the nitrates rules:

“There absolutely have been unintended consequences [as a result of 220kg N/ha]. It’ll have impacts on biodiversity and it will decimate the tillage sector.

"The dairy farmer needs the tillage farmer, they need native grains, native proteins and straw. We also need a strong livestock sector – who’s going to take our calves to beef?

"So, the answer can’t be that we force dairy farmers to take more land and drive up the price of land. That can’t be the answer, but that’s what they’re doing at the moment.

“It would appear that, really, this nitrates box that they want to tick has taken over their view. Even when it comes to biodiversity, forcing dairy farmers to take other land that would likely have otherwise been low-intensity land and bringing that into the dairy system – that’s not good for biodiversity.

“Timing is the key thing here. I know from talking to dairy co-ops that the amount of chemical fertiliser that is being purchased has fallen off a cliff in the last two years.

“The precision that has been brought to the spreading of slurry has been incredible in the last few years. There has been huge change, but unfortunately, it has locked us into a particular point in time and effectively only gives us one year to expect results to manifest itself, which is crazy, and that has to be the basis for our argument.

“We need to not raise our expectations too much that this change can happen easily. There may well be trade-offs here at the end of the day. So, there’s a combination of one hell of a battle, whilst also preparing farmers with understanding that this is ultimately the direction of travel,” Flanagan said.

It’s political

Speaking from the floor, mid-Cork IFA chairman Conor O’Leary was scathing of the way the changes to the nitrates derogation are happening:

“This is not quite a nitrates issue, but rather a political issue. This is being put through as fast as possible, before we can come with the results that will show why it shouldn’t happen. There is a speed in pushing this through.

“What is being asked for here is a reduction in nitrates over the country of less than 4kg/hectare; we can find this in a notch on the fertiliser spreader, we can find it in more careful slurry spreading. We can find it in lots of other ways, but there’s a push here to get it through [the reduction in stocking rate] before we find the solution.

“We have many solutions to this. We need to put them out there for public perception, but we are not going to win the political battle without a sharp shock and a show of force or something to snap this back, because the reasonable ask so far has not worked,” O’Leary said.

Proxy for emissions?

Reacting to this, TJ Flanagan said, you can’t help feeling that the nitrates issue has been used as a proxy for emissions:

“If regulators can do something on nitrates and force a halt to the dairy industry and blame nitrates for it, that would solve the emissions problem as they see it, so there is a bit of that going on,” he said.

Limerick dairy farmer John Hourigan was sceptical of the way the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been accounting for the sources of pollution in Ireland.

Speaking from the floor, Hourigan said: “Farmers are getting total responsibility for the lack of improvement in water quality in Ireland.

"If you look at the figures for livestock over the last 40 or 50 years, there were seven million livestock in Ireland in the 1970s – there is the same number today. It has oscillated a bit and the composition of the herd has changed a little, but basically, we have had a static livestock population for the last 50 odd years.

Septic tanks

“In those 50 years, water quality has continually dropped. Also in that time, the number of sewage systems that have been failing or the number of septic tanks that have been built in this country has greatly increased, and the amount of sewage going into rivers has increased too.

"In that same timeframe, the quality of the housing on dairy farms, every farm in fact, has improved greatly. Slurry storage and slurry usage has also improved greatly.

“So it’s hard to believe that improved housing and improved slurry storage is the cause of disimproved water quality – and that the increase in septic tanks [as a result of the human population in Ireland increasing by 75% since 1970] is not the cause instead.

“I think the EPA have big questions to answer here in terms of how correct and how honest their assessment is.”