nitrates action programme 2015-2018

[sheepfarmer106]

As part of study i was looking to determine the pros and cons of the nitrates action programme legislation for both the farmer and the environment. Any thoughts??

 

[N.Yorks.]

Has made farmers focus on the nitrogen values of various manures and organic wastes. This has obviously reduced the potential for watercourse pollution AND allowed the farmer to save on purchased N.

Before NVZ's most viewed mucks and slurries as wastes to be got rid of rather than valuable materials.

From some farmers points of view the N planning requirements etc are time consuming and a bind. They don't put aside the time to work out what they need to understand and consequently don't make full savings on purchased N fert. These individuals will complain about bureaucracy etc etc. The EA then come knocking, everyone panics and the land agent rubs his hands together as a nice bit of reactive NVZ record keeping comes his/her way!
Land agent 1, Farmer 0.

 

[Brisel]

Has made farmers focus on the nitrogen values of various manures and organic wastes. This has obviously reduced the potential for watercourse pollution AND allowed the farmer to save on purchased N.

Before NVZ's most viewed mucks and slurries as wastes to be got rid of rather than valuable materials.

From some farmers points of view the N planning requirements etc are time consuming and a bind. They don't put aside the time to work out what they need to understand and consequently don't make full savings on purchased N fert. These individuals will complain about bureaucracy etc etc. The EA then come knocking, everyone panics and the land agent rubs his hands together as a nice bit of reactive NVZ record keeping comes his/her way!
Land agent 1, Farmer 0.

I was with you all the way to the last paragraph. Some farmers need to do better. If they choose to ignore the rules then pay through the nose for the wrong people (why a land agent??? An agronomist is more appropriate and cheaper).

You're right - before NVZs manures were viewed as waste not fertiliser. Fertiliser was also abused, with many not applying enough or too much. Regulation has improved the applied science of nutrient use. The RB209 Fertiliser Manual is deeply flawed but as a rough working document it's not a bad guide - it's what you will be measured against by the EA in court, should things get that far.

On a personal note, my fertiliser budget for the current growing season is £184,000. Not considering the value of manures or optimal doses of fertiliser just isn't good business.

To be honest I haven't seen the proposals for the next round of heavy handed rules. I will go and have a look then come back to this thread.

 

[Pan mixer]

The most boring part about all those calculations - at least for grass - is that you flog your way through the lot, come up with an N-max figure and then it never rains enough to put more than half of it on the crop. Then you have to write down why you didn't do what you said you would do

 

[Brisel]

Why do you have to write down why you didn't use the legal maximum?? Can you show me where that rule is written please??

I rarely apply the NMax rate. It's not always the best investment & the optimum N dose is usually less than that.

 

[Tarw Coch]

Didn't know muck was ever a waste, my father was telling me the importance of muck as a fertiliser before I reached double digits in age.

That said , since being in an NVZ and needing to soil sample I have found that our grazing ground needs more muck previously we had concentrated muck applications on silage and plough ground as we were taking off these fields whereas stock were mucking the grazing ground themselves, never thought they'd need more but soil analysis says different.

 

[Pan mixer]

Why do you have to write down why you didn't use the legal maximum?? Can you show me where that rule is written please??

I rarely apply the NMax rate. It's not always the best investment & the optimum N dose is usually less than that.

Book 6 page 7.

'If your actual applications differed from your plan, you will need to record full details of the applications'

 

[Brisel]

My nitrogen plan is separate from my NMax calculation. Isn't yours?

 

[Pan mixer]

My nitrogen plan is separate from my NMax calculation. Isn't yours?

I always plan for max - just in case.

 

[Brisel]

Do you buy enough fertiliser for NMax?

You & I are doing 2 plans anyway. My NMax and plan for buying. You with your NMax and the "actual"

Edit: I have Gatekeeper, which calculates the NMax and records what was actually applied. I run a separate spreadsheet for working out tonnages required for buying.

 

[Grass And Grain]

In reply to the OP, it would be interesting to find out if nitrogen levels in rivers have changed at all.

Some areas have been in nvzs for a good few years now. If nitrogen levels in water haven't improved then arguably farmers have been wasting their time following the rules. Conversely, it could be worthwhile.

 

[Brisel]

One of the fears of water nitrates has been that some ground water was rainfall 50 years ago in the big limestone aquifers of the downlands, Cotswolds etc. We could still be seeing soil N mineralised when a lot of grassland was ploughed up for WW2

 

[Pan mixer]

Do you buy enough fertiliser for NMax?

You & I are doing 2 plans anyway. My NMax and plan for buying. You with your NMax and the "actual"

Edit: I have Gatekeeper, which calculates the NMax and records what was actually applied. I run a separate spreadsheet for working out tonnages required for buying.

My nitrogen buying plan involves buying some top up in May or June when I see how things are going - I have a fair proportion of my land in grass and it is difficult to predict how this will grow, how much the stock will eat and how hard the environmental department will allow me to graze some fields - a balancing act beyond the remit of N-max, I also have a 60 acre block with no fertilizer allowable for other reasons (but not organic) and this means all sorts of averages are meaningless.

 

[Brisel]

Meaningless - maybe. It's still a legal requirement.

 

[Pan mixer]

Jolly tedious red tape of the very worst kind.

 

[Tarw Coch]

Jolly tedious red tape of the very worst kind.

There was a letter in the FW or FG a few weeks back from a lady who had lost her husband but had carried on at the farm unaware of the paperwork requirements. About 12 months later she had an EA inspection and was fined despite as she put it, not having caused any pollution.

 

[Grass And Grain]

Agreed @Brisel any changes in the aquifers will presumably be very slow. River data should give us some indication if current practices are working, that is if farmers are doing what they are supposed to do.

I do all my records, spread fertiliser and manure diligently etc. etc. and then see 2000 outdoor fattening pigs on some free draining leachable sandy stubble land . Nothing in the rules as far as I know to stop the outdoor pigs.

The rivers in our areas are between 8 and 12 ppm N, yet we are still in an NVZ. Should have appealed really.


Another thing that gets me (if I understand the rules correctly)...

There are closed periods for manures such as broiler litter, or other manures that have a readily available nitrogen level above (I think) 30 percent. So if I have a manure that is 29 percent readily available nitrogen then I can apply up to 250Kg N/ha with no closed period (so 25t/ha if it had an N content of 10 Kg/t of N fresh weight). Whereas I cannot apply even 1 tonne to the ha in the closed period if the product was 30 percent or above of readily available nitrogen.

It does not take a genius to work out that 25t/ha of the 29 percent product is applying an awful lot more readily available nitrogen than the 1t of 30 percent.

To say that NVZ rulles are a reasonalby comprehensive and complex system, it seems to be flawed. Somebody spent a lot of time and money devising a system that is seemingly not prescriptive in what N applications it does and does not allow.

Why can we apply vast ammounts of bagged N to within 1m of a watercourse, but not so much as a sniff of FYM within 10m?

Slurry needs a 10m buffer, but N in liquid fert only 1m

I get concerns about run off and people doing silly things like flinging it into a ditch, but really. Is a 10m buffer on FYM really making any difference? If river N concentrations are still the same as they were 5 years since then I would say it is a rule for a rules sake.

 

[Brisel]

There has to be a line drawn somewhere - what manures have 29% readily available N? FYM used to be 10% readily available but were increased to 20%. The distivction between "fresh" and "old" is made in RB209. Fresh being, well, fresh out of a crew yard & old being a well rotted heap outside for a few months.

Outdoor pigs? I'm with you there - the EA hate it too but there's nothing they can do about it. A lass I did my BASIS Soil & Water course with works for AHDB Pigs - she spends a lot of her time "training" outdoor unit managers about mitigaing pollution & dealing with the EA.

Liquid fertiliser - applied by a vertical stream with a low risk of accidental application to a watercourse from a fixed tramline. Slurry/manures - applied by a fairly high trajectory spreader rotor or splash plate by (draws breath & reaches for a tin hat...) by untrained operators trying to cover the whole field if possible. I fully expect a backlash from that comment from tanker/spreader drivers but what formal documented training do they have? I'll bet 95% of liquid fertiliser is applied by NRoSO trained sprayer drivers. For solid fertiliser it will be somewhere between the two IMO as many spinner operators I know aren't also spraying, so no NRoSO & not necessarily any tramlines in grassland near to the ditch nor guarantee of correct spreader calibration close to field edges.

I'd be interested to see what historic data there is for watercourses to see than change over time - I'm sure the data exists in sensitive catchments but I can't readily find the graphs of nitrate elevels over the last few years. @360farmsupport might be able to point us in the right direction here?

 

[Wastexprt]

There's this one https://ea.sharefile.com/share?#/view/sb89ab9fd3954221a and here https://www.gov.uk/government/uploa...a-stats-observatory-indicators-da3-120224.pdf

No doubt there's some metadata available, but would need specific catchments to be useful.

 

[Grass And Grain]

There has to be a line drawn somewhere - what manures have 29% readily available N? FYM used to be 10% readily available but were increased to 20%. The distivction between "fresh" and "old" is made in RB209. Fresh being, well, fresh out of a crew yard & old being a well rotted heap outside for a few months.

If the rules wish to base closed periods based on readily available N then I think it should be a limit on total Kg of it, rather than saying you can put zero of a 30% product on but 250kg total N of a 29 percent product. So just set the limit at 250 Kg total N and also 75 Kg (250 Kg x 30%) of readily available in those periods.

I do agree with the slurry problem. There is a much greater volume of product per ha than liquid fert, more chance of run off and probably not applied to a growing crop.

Solid N fert vs FYM though I think is somewhat different. I recon I could (if allowed) apply FYM within a couple of metres of the watercourse without getting too much onto the ditch bank. Spreading bagged N in cereals (using a border deflector set up correctly) I'm sure that some gets in the ditch, and will dissolve immediately.