Friday, March 29, 2024

PULPIT: Kiwis, Irish take wrong approach

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Despite its battle-scarred history the Republic of Ireland seems to be getting its stuff together these days, at least on the farming and food front.
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Since 2012, when they sprang Origin Green on us with its focus on sustainability, the Irish have been measuring everything on individual farms and in food plants and collecting a mass of improvement data on the central Bord Bia computer.

They’ve even added a few more categories including biodiversity to what they collect.

They are managing to reduce farm carbon footprints a bit and their agri-food export figures go up every year. Good stuff.

This year, as part of the Irish contribution to Fieldays, I managed to find out about Teagasc through Dr Frank O’Mara, its research director.

This is the overarching, semi-state authority responsible for research and development, training and advisory services in the agri-food sector.

Teagasc’s rules on farming and collection of information from individual farmers are even more comprehensive, as I discovered when O’Mara generously gave me the slides from his lecture at the Enterprise Ireland dinner and we discussed approaches to fertiliser use in our two countries.

As part of the European Union, Ireland is subject to EU regulations, one of which is the Good Agricultural Practice for Protection of Waters.

It sets out in detail the way in which every type of animal-produced waste, including soiled water, must be calculated and spread and sufficient storage provided to cope with a whole winter’s effluent production. 

What it comes down to is that for dairy the basic stocking rate is two cows a hectare and the animal-produced nitrogen level is not to exceed 170kg/ha.

Farmers who want to increase the stocking rate must apply for a derogation and this year the amount of data, maps, soil analyses, buildings coverage to be taken to the one-on-one meeting with a Teagasc expert has been increased and the derogation approval is checked every year, with inspections. 

If farmers are found to have exceeded the 170kg/ha limit there are a range of increasing percentage penalties applied to their payments from EU-funded schemes.

However, I also discovered that about 350,000 tonnes of urea is being used every year in Ireland.  

So, while they are measuring their animal-produced nitrogen, there is obviously a lot of chemical nitrogen also being put on. Not quite our 800,000 tonnes but a fair whack for a small country.

It appears we are not alone in trying to clean up our waters from leached nitrogen.

The Irish EPA in its 2016 report said “Nutrient enrichment is the most widespread threat to water quality in Ireland, including land spreading of artificial fertilisers and animal manures in unsuitable climatic and ground conditions.”

When is the science community going to get the message that urea is making a lot of money for the big fertiliser companies but it’s ruining our soil structures, we are growing less pasture than we were in the 1980s and, despite all the screaming from farmers that nothing will grow if they don’t spread it, our waters are not improving as they are supposed to.

The Irish might have everything seemingly measured but their water isn’t improving either.

Both countries appear to be working on the premise that cows are the enemies of the environment.

Ireland makes it very difficult to stock at more than two cows a hectare and applying to have more requires a mountain of documents and a favourable annual decision by the authorities.  

Our rules rely on use of a computer system, supposedly by experts, and a variety of decisions made by our various council members.

If we could just stop relying on technology and start remembering how Nature did it successfully for millions of years, maybe we would let Nature’s billions of critters get on with it and even provide some living extras to give them a hand.  

Some guys here have already proved it.

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