Jeremy's Blog 25th February 2022: Manurial Value Pollution and Fertility
This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 24th February 2022
Once land was farmable, the two great endeavours to improve productive potential were draining and ensuring fertility. The Roman author, Pliny, recorded the British marling land, still in the law if little done for a century. While fallowing cropped land, using manures returned fertility in mixed farming systems. Farming improvement came to be supported by the assessment of (once significant) manurial values for outgoing tenants. With artificial fertilisers and the specialisation of farming, manure and slurry, produced at increasing scale, became seen not only as a resource but as a problem.
Ove the last generation, the point source pollution issues for water quality and ecology have been joined by diffuse pollution and now airborne ammonia affecting urban air quality and SSSIs. The first UK Agricultural Partnership meeting, focussed on water, had soil run-off as the central concern, with the range of nutrients bound to soil particles. Broadsheet papers report issues in the Wye and other catchments.
As Government and public attitudes have required change, so controls have come with the SSAFO storage regulations, NVZ and related regulations, nutrient management rules and controls on spreading. Wales and Northern Ireland now have territory-wide NVZs, Scotland effectively so while also removing grandfather rights for stores. In a perverse circle, consequent planning restrictions limit the ability to solve issues (though England may now see nutrient neutrality creating value).
Yet manures remain a resource for fertility and sometimes, while depleted in energy, for AD. Whether as problem or resource that drives improved storage, separation of clean water and better management and spreading with protection of water courses. Storage brings a large overhead cost without adding to sales.
DEFRA has indicated assistance in England. More money is being found for last autumn’s FETF round including better spreading equipment. Slurry acidification with ancillary equipment is in the Farming Transformation Fund’s current round. The first full scheme is due this autumn to help livestock farms reach the six months storage likely to become the legal requirement.
Some arable farms import manures and sewage sludge, facing the same issues where they hold it ahead of spreading. As with livestock farms, loss of nutrients is a cost as well as a risk. Ministers muse about getting more manures into arable areas to aid soil improvement and relieve pressure in the west. Animals have long moved seasonally to do just that.
This becomes one facet of how land uses may change as commodity support recedes into history and people seek to find value in challenge.