EA, river pollution and the BBC

Northern territory

Member
Livestock Farmer
I have been walking through our river every day to get to some sheep( amazingly shallow for time of year) it is running crystal clear at the moment, noticed last Sunday it went very merky with a sheen on my wellies when I came out. Obvious what was going on as we are half a mile down stream from sewage works.
 

DaveGrohl

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Cumbria
Actually having now listened to your link I think you need to alter the thread title to "Radio 4’s Farming Today still don’t have a fekking clue about methane and continue to peddle misinformation that is woeful."

Still, at least BBC TV have done an item on water company releases and it’ll prob be on the news all day now.
 

onesiedale

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Derbyshire
Actually having now listened to your link I think you need to alter the thread title to "Radio 4’s Farming Today still don’t have a fekking clue about methane and continue to peddle misinformation that is woeful."
You're right, but the BBC are only peddling information there that has been given to them by "the largest beef processor in the UK and Ireland"
Sadly the mis-information goes right the way up those who consider themselves the leaders of our industry.
My nephew's Harper dissertation this year is comparing conventional with Grass-Fed beef production. The sponsor of his project is ABP. He's been told not to do any data collection for his study, ABP have all the information he needs.
It sounds like the BBC will have the information too!
All this talk about ELMS, carbon neutrality, healthy eating and even NVZs is futile until the methane cycle is understood. There's almost a case for it being on the National Curriculum.
 

Yale

Member
Livestock Farmer
Another case of do as we tell you,not as we do!

It‘s disgusting that farmers are hounded however sewerage treatment plants are blatantly and unashamedly discharging raw untreated material into rivers.

The difference is farmers do not set out to pollute waterways however the EA backed water companies do it blatantly breaking the law

Institutional environmental vandalism!
 

Yale

Member
Livestock Farmer
Nearly all failing NVZ areas are always downstream of sewage works
Yes!

We have been in an NVZ for 20 years and I can guarantee when it was forced upon us the problem was being caused by sewerage plants.

However how do you fight an organisation which at the time was both policeman and law breaker.

In our catchment there are no dairy farms now and a patchwork of extensive sheep and occasional small suckler herds.

And we are in an NVZ.

A mockery!
 

onesiedale

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Derbyshire
Yes!

We have been in an NVZ for 20 years and I can guarantee when it was forced upon us the problem was being caused by sewerage plants.

However how do you fight an organisation which at the time was both policeman and law breaker.

In our catchment there are no dairy farms now and a patchwork of extensive sheep and occasional small suckler herds.

And we are in an NVZ.

A mockery!
...and here's us, a 500 cow dairy unit, with just one field in the NVZ. errr, it's the only field below the village!
The, now retired, EA officer we had here always maintained that farms were not the problem. Even as the regional manager he would stick his neck out and support farming but was constantly beaten into submission from rules and regs coming down from above.
He simply retired early and has left it to the young ones.
 

bluebell

Member
wasnt it wrong when high levels of phospherus where found in the river wye, blamed on the growth of farms keeping chickens , when the real reason was sewage contamination from plants and private septic tanks?
 

bluebell

Member
how can it be, on the one hand we had a stern telling off from the enviroment agency about an old redundant diesel tank that had leaked into the ditch behind it, then into our local river this was a few years back then? now we have a large main sewer pipe that runs under our bottom fields next to same river, with two manholes in our fields, that when it rains always overflow out of the manhole covers contaminating our grazing land with raw sewage, thus flowing into the same river?
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
The village upstream of us has no mains sewerage system just a collection of septic tanks of various vintages. Even some of the modern ones ooze grey sludge into the watercourses due to poor design, installation or lack of maintenance. I pointed this out when the EA were going through our records but they just don’t want to know. Personally a bit of grey sludge doesn’t really bother me either. It’s been like that for maybe 70 years and the watercress and other vegetation breaks it down naturally, so no big deal really. A certain amount of wildlife still thrives there. So if we can say this is acceptable, and we aren’t bothered that there aren’t rainbow trout in every stream, and frankly it doesn’t really bother me, then why can’t the media and EA move on and stop haranguing and blaming farmers for something that isn’t their fault?
Then you get these folk saying they can’t go swimming in these rivers. Well, why should they be fit to swim in? A happy medium is a certain amount of pollution being carried out to see, and a certain amount of wildlife in them. The cost of perfection would absolutely enormous for a tiny tiny benefit so can’t we just say well it’s alright, leave it be? Surely there are more pressing problems…. like having to wait 2 hours for an ambulance?
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
I think there is going to have to be a realisation amongst the woke and the entitled that a pristine environment isn’t possible if you expect 70 million humans to live a reasonably comfortable lifestyle in a country that would naturally support about half a million living in mud huts shitting in the woods to achieve the kind of zero impact they expect.
 
The village upstream of us has no mains sewerage system just a collection of septic tanks of various vintages. Even some of the modern ones ooze grey sludge into the watercourses due to poor design, installation or lack of maintenance. I pointed this out when the EA were going through our records but they just don’t want to know. Personally a bit of grey sludge doesn’t really bother me either. It’s been like that for maybe 70 years and the watercress and other vegetation breaks it down naturally, so no big deal really. A certain amount of wildlife still thrives there. So if we can say this is acceptable, and we aren’t bothered that there aren’t rainbow trout in every stream, and frankly it doesn’t really bother me, then why can’t the media and EA move on and stop haranguing and blaming farmers for something that isn’t their fault?
Then you get these folk saying they can’t go swimming in these rivers. Well, why should they be fit to swim in? A happy medium is a certain amount of pollution being carried out to see, and a certain amount of wildlife in them. The cost of perfection would absolutely enormous for a tiny tiny benefit so can’t we just say well it’s alright, leave it be? Surely there are more pressing problems…. like having to wait 2 hours for an ambulance?
The brook that flows through this farm, a mile or so out of town, was in times gone by the towns sewage brook.
Channels had been dug in the fields here and the brook was damed to let the sh!t filled water flood irrigate the fields, no doubt it was good for fertility, you can still see where these channels had been in very dry tines or when you plough by the dark black soil.

Today the brook runs Cristal clear........... except when it rains, it still carries street waterfront town and from the more recent industrial estate .
 

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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