The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
‘Water ban will result in catastrophe for growers’
Producers impacted by the water abstraction ban in North East Fife are predicting “catastrophic” losses running into hundreds of thousands of pounds on individual farms.
As Sepa prepares to withdraw 79 abstraction licences tonight, vegetable grower Ross Forster from Peacehill at Newport-onTay says his farm alone is facing a “significant sixfigure loss” if the ban continues for any length of time.
“The immediate impact is that I have 110 acres of cauliflower we need to start harvesting next week, at 12 acres a week for the next two months – and my licence is being removed. It’s going to be catastrophic,” he said.
“The crop is already desperate for water now and if cauliflower is under drought stress it gets black marks on the curd which makes it unsellable. It’s a very grim outlook. We’re already at 25% crop loss because we’re struggling to irrigate, and East of Scotland Growers (ESG) as a group could be facing total losses of £1 million per week for the next 15 weeks on broccoli and cauliflower if this goes on.”
Mr Forster said he had given up on his beets crop and potato fields are struggling.
“But the broccoli and cauliflower has the most serious consequences. If we’re allowed no water, it could well be that by September and October we could be looking at 70100% losses, and the input costs have already been made, the crops are all in the ground.”
He said he is now contemplating taking desperate measures to save at least some of his crops.
“The only option I’ve got is on another farm where I have a licence with a reservoir and a bore hole so I’m deciding whether I can drive water from one farm to another. I’ve worked out if I run tankers with water through the night I could potentially move enough water to keep one irrigator going. We’d have to get the water into a tank and set the irrigation pump next to it then pump the water out of that on to the field. Obviously it’s pretty serious carting water seven miles from one farm to another, but that’s feasibly the only option I’ve got.”
However, the industry is operating on such fine margins at the moment, Mr Forster said there would need to be a significant improvement in prices to make the operation worthwhile.
NFU Scotland has criticised blanket abstraction bans as “just wrong” and they have argued strongly for high risk vegetable crops to be prioritised, to no avail.
Mr Forster said: “Other sectors like the pig industry have been given significant support to help through the losses. If we’re going to have our water source removed, we need help.”