Failure to tackle the level of slurry use on Irish farms has long been a bugbear of anglers and environmentalists, but it has now come to a head with the Government being cited for inaction by the European Commission, writes Iva Pocock
The row over how much slurry farmers may spread on their land has been simmering for over a decade, with anglers pointing to polluted rivers and lakes, and farmers insisting that their wastes are only partly responsible for declining water quality. Now, following the recent European Court ruling against Ireland over its failure to prevent nitrate pollution in agriculture, and next year's measure which will force farmers to comply with a range of environmental legislation before receiving their annual payment, the issue has come to a head.
On one side is the farming lobby, particularly dairy farmers, who are arguing fiercely against any suggestion of keeping nitrate levels down by reducing the amount of slurry permitted per acre. The main bugbear, as they see it, is the European Nitrates Directive. Aimed at reducing nitrate water pollution from agricultural wastes and protecting drinking water, the legislation was adopted in 1991.
"It was brought in at a time when the Greens were very strong in Europe," says Cork dairy farmer and chairman of the IFA environment committee, Tom Dunne, who considers it yet another obstacle for farmers to overcome in their efforts to survive under the EU's new agricultural policy. Since then farmers here have mainly ignored it, thanks, say environmentalists, to their powerful lobbying which ensured that successive governments also ignored it.
"Indeed reaction from Ireland down the years appeared to indicate that nitrate pollution of ground or surface waters was not a problem of any serious consequence in Ireland," says veteran angler Tony Waldron, who, along with the Carra-Mask Water Protection Group in Co Mayo, was instrumental in the European Commission taking a case against Ireland over its failure to implement the Directive.
"To be fair to Ireland, we didn't really have a nitrate problem 20 years ago," says Dr Padraic Larkin, director of the Environmental Protection Agency. "But we have certainly developed one since then." The latest EPA report on the State of Ireland's environment concludes that elevated nitrate levels have been found in some 23 per cent of all drinking water samples taken in 2001-2002 as a result of animal wastes and faulty septic tanks.
The Code of Good Farming Practice jointly launched in 1996 by the then ministers Ivan Yates and Brendan Howlin was considered a precursor to the action programme required under the Nitrates Directive. It was followed by what one commentator describes as a "vow of national silence" which lasted until recently.
Local authority agricultural bye-laws were also meant to prevent water pollution from slurry-spreading on certain lands and at certain times of year. But "washing things down to a local level is the making of problems", says one official. "The system starts to fail when the executive side can't get the elected side to agree to bye-laws," he says. "All of that has put off the day when there'll be serious controls on slurry-spreading."
Bye-laws have only been introduced by five counties to date. In Mayo, objections by the local IFA representative repeatedly hampered efforts to agree proposed bye-laws and none has been adopted to date, according to Waldron. "In an agricultural area it's asking a lot of councillors to bring them in," says another official.
Given that Ireland has been firmly rapped on the knuckles by the European Court of Justice for failing to produce a nitrates action programme eight years ago, the pressure is on the Departments of Environment and Agriculture to adopt one by the end of June. But the draft issued for public consultation late last year was greeted with dismay by the farming lobby.
"The nitrates action plan is not going to change the situation. It is going to add cost but no benefit to water quality," says the IFA's Tom Dunne. "The action programme is to placate the officials in Brussels and to keep them happy." The IFA is particularly incensed at the proposal to limit levels of organic nitrogen (as opposed to artificial nitrogen) to 170 kg per hectare. This translates to a stocking rate of one cow for every 1.2 acres. "Most farmers in dairy have one cow per acre so this action programme will require the majority of farmers to get 20 per cent more land," says Dunne. Dairy farmers are feeling particularly threatened given that some 8,000 are predicted to leave farming by 2010, and those remaining are looking at having to increase production by 50 per cent to remain viable.
However Patricia McKenna MEP says the vast majority of Ireland's farmers will be able to live quite happily within the nitrates directive. "According to Teagasc, only 2 to 3 per cent of farmers will find themselves in difficulties with the draft action programme", she says. "It is high-density dairy and pig farmers who have problems with it. They are the biggest polluters. They don't represent the majority of farmers but they are the 'biggest' in the sense that they have big operations and dominate the policy-making of farm organisations."
In a major concession to the IFA the draft action programme includes a maximum level of 250 kg of organic nitrogen per hectare under special conditions. However, it is understood that the EU Commission is unhappy with this level and a Department of Environment spokesperson explains that it plans to apply separately in October this year for a special concession for this higher level, which is 40 kg per hectare above the directive's upper limit.
Other than potentially reducing stocking rates, says one official, there is nothing new in the action programme that hasn't been part of Government advice to farmers for at least a decade, so the level of IFA protestation over the proposals reflects a certain level of hypocrisy, says one source. "If farmers were adhering to the good agriculture code as they claim, why all the hullaballoo." He adds that the difference is that instead of being a voluntary code, the action programme will be compulsory in law.
"This is where the rubber meets the road for the farming industry, when productivity conflicts with the environment and restrictions are required to protect the public good," says the EPA's Larkin. "Effectively the EU is moving from production-based payments to environmentally based payments and this will be a sea-change for farmers."
While the farming lobby will continue to push for its stocking rate derogation, the nitrates directive is only one part of the suite of legislation which farmers must "cross-comply" with from 2005 in order to get their new single payments. Other legislation includes the Water Framework Directive which heralds a radical new ecological approach to water management.
This is expected to bring to a head the other simmering row between farmers, anglers and environmentalists over how much phosphorous the land can safely absorb without it causing eutrophication, the biggest threat to Irish inland waters and estuaries. "The EPA funds a couple of very large-scale projects which are proving that we still have much too much phosphorous in our soils," says Larkin. "We could stop spreading it for years in many areas and still have enough to meet agricultural needs."
For the meantime, the Government is focused on agreeing a nitrates action programme, but it's in a difficult position. No Government likes facing down the farming community yet without an EU Commission-approved action plan, farmers won't qualify for their payments, and the State could face substantial daily fines for non-compliance.