Zero Cooperation with SFI until Autumn Spreading Ban Lifted.

[DrWazzock]

That’s my view of it. Sell yourselves for £10 per acre if you like but until they come to their senses over autumn manure, they’ll get no cooperation on voluntary matters from me.

 

[betternextyear]

Here in N shrops our rivers are very unhealthy and if the winter spreading ban helps, thats a good thing.
Our local AD plants sometimes spread on waterlogged fields, (dont know how they get away with it) That shouldnt happen.
I use a lot of strawy cattle and pig muck but do my best to make sure every kilo of nutrient is used by crops and grass.
Yes I am too tight to buy much NPK in.
So will probably take the£10 and spend the money on a better muck spreader, 18 metre please

 

[DrWazzock]

So because of one localised problem, the whole country is punished with an over the top ban. That’s a ridiculous way to manage things. Address the local problem, sort it out, but absolutely no need to clobber the entire industry.

 

[teslacoils]

How about no cooperation until privatised water companies syphoning off profits to the Caymans / Canadian pension companies, are made to invest in sewerage capacity and stop dumping into watercourses?

 

[DrWazzock]

I would estimate here that ploughing in a bit of muck would see the very small amounts of nitrogen locked up in the beak down of chopped straw over winter and/or held in the biomass of winter crop green cover.
To treat 20 ton per acre FYM applied by small mixed farms in the autumn with tanker loads of digestate applied to waterlogged ground just about sums up where the regulatory bodies go wrong. They’ll finish us all off just because of one or two cowboys who should have already been brought to book under existing rules.

 

[DrWazzock]

What about ammonia release of muck left on top over winter. Or the carbon footprint of extra storage capacity.
Anyway we have had all the arguments. It’s tools down on SFI here till they show a bit of flexibility. They need to rethink the ban. At least come up with something that has a bit more finesse.

 

[jonnieboy]

The ban has come in due to pollution issues
Some farmers and AD operations have taken big liberties and need policing. Everyone sees it every year and nothing is done to stop them
Has anyone actually checked the water leaving their land ? I swap straw for FYM and rotate it round the farm sensibly so an outright ban is not good
So thank you mr couldn’t give a toss need to get it on
Once again the hapless minority govern policy

 

[Fish]

Quite frankly if £10 an acre is between you and the poor house, I’d throw the towel in now.

 

[Will Blackburn]

With the price of fertiliser where it is, it should pay not to spread till after Christmas. With the price of cement where it is it’s not an easy circle to square.
We need to get used to more in crop organic matter applications and adapt our systems to suit.
Yeah the water industry is a joke, they need to separate all storm water out of the brown water system, then their job would be easy. They won’t face up to that job though, but at least joe public have more awareness that it is their sh1t not animal sh1t that is ruining the local river.

 

[Jackov Altraids]

I detest the way that it is implied that because a farmer objects to the autumn ban, rewilding etc, they don't care for the environment when the reverse is usually the case.
I don't condone bad practice at any time. Reducing the choice to spread by having closed periods only makes bad practice more likely.
It would be very interesting to see some statistics but I'm going to guess most major agricultural pollution incidents are as a result of the failure of storage systems.
If this is the case, making more and larger storage requirements seems a little perverse.

 

[Jackov Altraids]

"The Farm Yard Manure becomes ready for use in 4 to 6 months and on an average it contains 0.5%N, 0.2% P2O5 and 0.5% K2O. Application of 10 tons FYM to the soil gives 50Kg N, 20Kg P2O5 and 50 Kg K2O. Out of this 30% of N, 60-70% of P2O5 and 75% of K2O is available to the crop in the first year of application and the rest of the nutrient is available in the subsequent years.Considerable amount of N in FYM is lost during preparation and storage mainly as NH3 volatilisation and or NO3 leaching. The values normally reported as dry equivalent values and there was only superficial moisture removed."

So for each 10 tons of FYM spread;
15kg of nitrogen,
13 kg of phosphate,
37.5kg of potash
is available to the crop in the first year.

I guess that means it would be the equivalent to spreading an artificial NPK of 0.15/0.13/0.375.


While a "Considerable amount of N in FYM is lost during preparation and storage mainly as NH3 volatilisation and or NO3 leaching".

I always thought autumn spreading was very effective here.

 

[glasshouse]

How about no cooperation until privatised water companies syphoning off profits to the Caymans / Canadian pension companies, are made to invest in sewerage capacity and stop dumping into watercourses?

No offshore company should be eligible for govt contracts

 

[Tarw Coch]

I would estimate here that ploughing in a bit of muck would see the very small amounts of nitrogen locked up in the beak down of chopped straw over winter and/or held in the biomass of winter crop green cover.
To treat 20 ton per acre FYM applied by small mixed farms in the autumn with tanker loads of digestate applied to waterlogged ground just about sums up where the regulatory bodies go wrong. They’ll finish us all off just because of one or two cowboys who should have already been brought to book under existing rules.

Evidently you’re not in a NVZ, 16 tons per acre Max of FYM in a rolling 12 month period

 

[ollie989898]

No offshore company should be eligible for govt contracts

All business activities occurring within the UK landmass or territorial waters should attract tax at source. End of story.

The idea that you will clean up rivers by banning autumn organic manure application is a joke.

 

[BrianV]

How about no cooperation until privatised water companies syphoning off profits to the Caymans / Canadian pension companies, are made to invest in sewerage capacity and stop dumping into watercourses?

Here's the problem, often these sewage plants do not have the capacity or room to expand enough for the thousands of additional houses that are being built, their only option as storm drains are more often than not fed into the sewage system is to open the overflows into rivers when heavy rain falls.
The government cannot come down hard on sewage companies because of this so blame farmers so as to be seen to be doing something!

 

[Tarw Coch]

Here's the problem, often these sewage plants do not have the capacity or room to expand enough for the thousands of additional houses that are being built, their only option as storm drains are more often than not fed into the sewage system is to open the overflows into rivers when heavy rain falls.
The government cannot come down hard on sewage companies because of this so blame farmers so as to be seen to be doing something!

The local sewage works has two outlets into the near by watercourse, the one by the road is where the treated water emerges and where you some times see them taking samples, the other is only visible from farmland and doesn’t run in normal times, I think we can guess what this outlet is for, it’s also very close to the boundary of the NVZ

 

[glasshouse]

The local sewage works has two outlets into the near by watercourse, the one by the road is where the treated water emerges and where you some times see them taking samples, the other is only visible from farmland and doesn’t run in normal times, I think we can guess what this outlet is for, it’s also very close to the boundary of the NVZ

Is that outlet number one and outlet number two?

 

[DrWazzock]

Evidently you’re not in a NVZ, 16 tons per acre Max of FYM in a rolling 12 month period

Should have written per ha. 20 tonnes used to set my OSR up nicely. Been a few years since the sucklers went so I’m probably out of date. Can’t see it did any harm.

 

[ollie989898]

Should have written per ha. 20 tonnes used to set my OSR up nicely. Been a few years since the sucklers went so I’m probably out of date. Can’t see it did any harm.

There is no way putting on 20-25 tonnes/hectare of solid manures causes serious water pollution directly. For starters, the nutrients are often held in insoluble forms in manures and take time to become available. The only way you will get serious water pollution from farming is where the stuff is flowing straight off the surface of the soil being carried there by heavy rains OR where actual soil is visibly leaving the field which is easy to see because the water will be brown.

The above is driven not by whether manures are applied or not but by soil health, tillage practices and what green cover is growing at the time.

 

[neilo]

Only slightly related to this thread, but on adding OM via muck in the Autumn...

On the FG podcast last week, where @Abi Kay interviewed Useless, she brought up the EA ban on Autumn spreading. He laid the blame on EU rules (which surely they'll have to stop blaming soon? ), saying that EA were interpreting the EU rules and that DEFRA were 'advising' them on the matter now. I took it that he was suggesting that things might be a bit more sensible by next Autumn.

As I posted on the SFI thread, I wouldn't imagine the outright ban will be an ongoing issue...