Farmers who log on to the Department of Agriculture online portal to check their organic nitrogen excretion rate for 2024 still won’t know what the actual figure is.

The much-talked about change to the nitrates excretion rate for calves, cattle and dairy cows based on the crude protein of feed is still not in place.

On Christmas Eve, the Department wrote to the Irish Farmers Journal to say: “The Department wrote to farmers earlier this year advising of new excretion rates for a specific cohort of animals including young calves and for those managing protein levels in concentrate feed for dairy cows. These provisions will be applied if favourable to the farmer in respect of 2024 when establishing compliance with the Good Agriculture Practice for the Protection of Waters Regulations (commonly called the Nitrates Regulations).”

The Irish Farmers Journal understands that the changes require an update to the statutory instrument enforcing the nitrates regulations and this was supposed to be implemented and signed by Minister Darragh O’Brien in the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage before the end of 2024, but wasn’t.

The new minister in that department is James Browne, but there is some speculation that the water quality element of the brief will move with Minister O’Brien to his new portfolio in the Department of Climate, Environment, Energy and Transport.

Avoiding duplication

Ideally, it would move to the Department of Agriculture where it sits more naturally, given agriculture’s impact on water quality and to avoid duplication of resources between departments.

It would also help to provide a more united front in Ireland’s fight to retain the Nitrates Derogation.

In any event, farmers still don’t have clarity for what their actual nitrates excretion rate is for 2024. This is a big issue for those that are on the edge in terms of tripping above 170kg N/ha or tripping above between 220kg and 250kg N/ha depending on their location.

For those farmers that are currently in a 250kg N/ha derogation zone, the Department have flagged that this is going to reduce to 220kg N/ha by December 2025.

By the Irish Farmers Journal calculations, this reduces the annual N excretion rate per hectare to 247.5kg N/ha for 2025 presuming all of the parcels are in the 250kg area.

If part of the farm is in 220kg area then the overall derogation limit will be adjusted pro-rata.