Breaking the rules no way to improve our water quality

Such is the openness of the secret of fake slurry movements, ‘Importing slurry on paper — what’s in it for me?’ was recently the title of a farm discussion thread on Boards.ie, while it’s also discussed plainly at times on other social media platforms.

There has never been anything in the developments on nitrates regulations for farmers down the years, aside from extra costs and trying to improve water quality, of course.

Twenty years ago, nearly to the day, the Farming Independent was running stories on the potential impact of the Nitrates Directive.

Arguments went back and forth between farming organisations and Teagasc on the back of Ireland being told by the EU to rewrite significant sections of the Draft Action Programme under the Nitrates Directive because it did not go far enough.

At the time, farming organisations complained that much of the contents of the Nitrates Directive were unworkable — specifically, the closed slurry-spreading periods, minimum storage requirements of 16 to 24 weeks, organic nitrogen limits 170/210/250kg N/ha.

Some even said the requirement for farmers to have 16-24 weeks of slurry storage had the potential to bankrupt the sector.

The Green Party accused farmers of trying to stall measures to improve water quality under the Nitrates Directive.

Twenty years on, the arguments over the Nitrates Directive are still prominent in farming, while the country’s water quality has deteriorated in the past decade.

Quality

Agriculture is not the sole factor in determining the country’s water quality, but it is an important factor and the Nitrates Directive is aimed at protecting the quality of Ireland’s water.

One can argue about the best ways to improve our water quality and how farmers should be better supported, but blatantly breaking the current rules is not a solution to either problem.

Those who are doing it may be focused on ‘what’s in it for them’, but they are not serving the best interests of farmers or society.