Ian Liddell-Grainger We need to clean up our act on rivers

Ian Liddell-Grainger

Controls on the use of organic fertilisers abruptly slapped on farmers this autumn can only be an initial step towards curing a pollution problem that is gradually poisoning the countryside, Bridgwater and West Somerset MP

says in an open letter to Defra Secretary and Camborne & Redruth MP George Eustice

DEAR George Something of a kerfuffle is in progress, I observe, over the matter of using organic fertiliser on the fields this autumn.

Well, while I might not be terribly happy with the way the announcement has been made I must admit that the fundamental sense of the measure cannot really be argued with. I also believe that the time for talking and negotiation is past and that decisive action is the only course open to us.

To allow anyone to freely use a material with such potential for causing water pollution via run-off is really reckless at a time when virtually every river in the country fails to come up to the required purity standards.

My own concerns particularly focus on what has happened on the Somerset Levels where algal growth linked to excessive nutrients is now threatening the protected – internationally protected, I might add – status of the area. At the same time it is impossible not to observe the latest revelations about what Southern Water’s discharges are having on Chichester Harbour – an unacceptable state of affairs where another prime wildlife site is being downgraded.

My real concern, George, is the way this situation has been allowed to reach a crisis point despite farmers

being apparently being beset, not to say hogtied, by regulations and the existence of a national agency a large part of whose remit is to prevent pollution.

We would appear to have painted ourselves into a corner thanks to a few rogue elements in the farming sector being careless about how they use and store slurry and other fertilisers or how much of it they have chosen to apply over and above the needs of their crops.

The result being that only drastic action is going to prevent further deterioration.

The irony is that using organic fertiliser on fields in the autumn makes good sense. It’s a good use of a waste product; it improves soil health and reduces the need for manufactured fertilisers.

Evidence also shows that it reduces ammonia and phosphate emissions compared to applications in the spring. The application of organic materials will also build soil organic matter in the soil, which reduces erosion and increases nutrient storage, carbon sequestration and water retention.

Indeed this list of virtues has been repeatedly used as a kind of hallmark of excellence for traditional livestock farming as opposed to drenching prairies with chemicals to grow crops intensively, as practiced elsewhere in the country.

Organic fertiliser is, in short, a good thing – though sadly one of which one can have too much and certainly at the moment the farming industry has far more at its disposal than it can wisely or safely use.

I would suggest, George, that with thousands of miles of rivers now polluted we have to seriously rein back on what we allow to be released into them and that is going to require far more than a crackdown on farmers.

We need to involve everyone – including particularly the water companies - in finding an acceptable, long-term solution as to how we deal with the mountain of animal and human waste now casting such a long shadow over the countryside – and do it sooner rather than later.

Yours ever, Ian

‘With thousands of miles of rivers now polluted we have to seriously rein back on what we allow to be released into them’

> River water across the country is failing to meet purity standards