Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40
- 50)
WEDNESDAY 5 MARCH 2008
MR PETER
KENDALL, MR
ANDREW CLARK
AND MR
MICHAEL PAYNE
Q40 Chairman: In your revised proposals
for the Action Plan you make every effort to secure derogation
from grassland at 250kg/ha of nitrogen. How did you decide that
250 was the right number?
Mr Payne: There are quite a number
of other countries who already have derogations. They are all
either for 230 or 250. The figure currently operated in the UK,
which the Commission would contend was illegal, is 250. There
is a coalescence around the 250, 230 kind of area.
Q41 Chairman: But what you have described
to me is what is—. The question I asked is why is 250 the
right number? I am struggling a little bit to understand the practicalities,
because, Mr Clark, you also were saying if you looked at this
issue on a farm by farm basis you might come up with a different
formulation for the use of manures and nitrogen according to the
circumstances, and that is finessing it to a degree by farm. I
struggle to understand how in the real world you are going to
do that? You would have to have a farm by farm assessment for
something which, in terms of the movement of nitrate from the
surface of the land to the ground water, you have told us in earlier
evidence, takes a long time. I am not quite certain how we know
what the effect is that we are going to get out by all of this
fine-tuning. Coming back to this 250 kilogrammes figure, how do
we know that is the right number for grassland?
Mr Payne: I obviously recognise
your criticism, but I am just telling you what has happened. We
are working together with ADAS and Defra to develop the scientific
case, and I just do not think we are in a position to tell you.
Q42 Chairman: Let us turn it round
the other way. Part of the reason we are having this discussion
is that the European Union has decided that 170kg is the right
number. I am intrigued to know how we decide that 170kg/ha is
the right number. Has somebody done a sort of detailed analysis
that on every single soil type, if you put 170 on every year,
the water that comes out at the bottom will be guaranteed to be
at 50mg/l?
Mr Kendall: I think the point
we have been making is soils are different, areas are different
and closed periods and what they are dictating as to storage,
we know that farms have a different make-up of arable land and
grassland.
Q43 Chairman: It is all a bit of
guesswork really, is it not?
Mr Payne: Could I just comment
on the water coming out at the bottom?
Q44 Chairman: I am going to ask the
Minister the same thing, and if there is anybody here representing
the Minister, they had better nip out and tell him that this question
is coming!
Mr Payne: The water coming out
at the bottom, Chairman, what you say about ground water is true.
Where water drains to surface water, you know the result within
a calendar year, so you can monitor and get results, but a lot
of it is to do with the wording and interpretation of the Directive,
that any derogation should not prejudice the achievement of the
objectives, on what scale you have to assess them and there is
a lot of political administration, put it like that, in the way
these are administered. The issue of how the 170 was arrived at—
Q45 Chairman: I am just interested
in where these numbers come from?
Mr Clark: The figures come from
the Nitrates Directive. Those are the figures set down: 170 and
250.
Q46 Chairman: I do not blame you
if you cannot tell me, because it is not clear to me.
Mr Clark: Michael may be able
to, because he was there when it happened.
Q47 Chairman: Somebody in the Commission
has decided that these numbers are the correct numbers, and I
am just interested to know where these numbers have come from.
Did Jacques de whatever wake up one morning and think, "Oh,
I have the answer. It is 170"? What is the answer? It might
be 49, I do not know. I am just asking the question.
Mr Kendall: I suspect they often
look at something that is significantly lower than the current
norm and, therefore, they set targets that look to deliver lower
outcomes.
Chairman: I can see this is going to
be an entertaining line of questioning when our next witness comes
along.
David Taylor: Going back to cover crops
briefly, Chairman.
Chairman: Mr Tipping is going to ask
about cover crops. Mr Tipping, you ask the question about cover
crops.
Q48 Paddy Tipping: What is the case
for cover crops on light and sandy soils?
Mr Clark: We have looked at the
evidence, the rationale for introducing cover crops. It seems
to be based entirely on an analysis that was undertaken as part
of the Nitrate Sensitive Area Regime which was run in areas which
were principally sandy and shallow soils, and there, in the context
of the early 1990s, late 1980s, it was found to be an effective
measure. We have already demonstrated to you with evidence produced
by the AIC that the way we farm now in terms of the amount of
fertiliser used, the timing of the fertiliser, for example not
applying in the autumn, we think the context in which arable farms,
horticultural farms are operating is totally different to what
it was even 15 years ago, and so we think that the effectiveness
of cover crops expected to result from this sort of measure is
possibly overstated in that context. Having said that, we can
see there is, however, some evidence that cover crops can reduce
nitrate loss. We have to recognise that, and so our task is to
work with the farming sector in consultation to try and understand
how that can be applied so that it works practically with farms,
and we see particular problems. We are still in discussion, and
we have had good discussions with Defra about this—they
recognise it is not a universal panacea in the way that they have
suggested—but we see particular problems for the sugar beet
sector, for the horticultural sector, some of the high value crops
based on vegetables which have unusual regimes—it is not
a straightforward rape arable, fallow type approach—and
so I think we want to get more underneath the skin of that particular
regime.
Mr Kendall: Can I make a point
on the practical side. As I said, on heavy soils you do plough
the land early because the weather breaks it down. Where I think
we are seeing a change, since the earlier period of work that
indicated that light, shallow soils caused leaching, is many of
those farmers are either now in agri-farm schemes where they get
over wintered stubbles, therefore, they cultivate them deliberately
late, or, alternatively, they have understood the impacts of leaching
and, in order to keep those nutrients, they plough them late anyhow;
so we think that farmers are learning to react properly and therefore
behave differently on those soils. Ploughing a shallow or a light
soil in January is feasible, but with my heavy Bedfordshire clay
you are going to get stuck.
Q49 Paddy Tipping: Tell me about
the conservation and wildlife benefits of over wintering of stubble?
There are some, are there not?
Mr Clark: This is one of the things
which the RSPB and ourselves promoted as part of the Entry Level
Scheme. I looked at the data last month and found there were about
60,000ha of over wintered stubbles entered into the Entry Level
Scheme, which I am sure the RSPB, who will be visiting Peter's
farm on Friday, will be very keen to find out about. We are very
concerned, in this respect, that cover crops are not only going
to be agronomically difficult, they are perverse from a biodiversity
point of view unless they are managed very carefully. The requirement
to have a green cover might work for nitrates, but in obtaining
a green cover you might well end up not having any over wintered
benefits for feeding birds, you might well end up having to use
extra herbicides to kill off that green cover, you will have had
to disturb the ground in the first place to establish the green
cover, so you are going to be creating nitrate at that time, and
so the perversities of the cover crop option, while in nitrates
terms simplistically is good, in terms of the perversities of
this measure we are very concerned about them.
Q50 Chairman: In conclusion, I asked
for some information about what had been happening in other Member
States and, in terms of storage capacity for slurries, the impression
I got was that other Member States had installed anywhere between
six or five months capacity, for example, as in the case of Northern
France and Brittany, five months in the south. They had already
done that. What is your impression about what other Member States
have done, and if their farmers have been able to afford enhanced
storage capacity against the background when the whole of Europe's
agriculture is under the kind of price and input pressures ours
are, how have they afforded it?
Mr Clark: There are three ways
in which you can help with this: there is time, there is planning
permission and there is grant aid. If you look at Ireland, they
have got, I think, it is three, three and a half months' requirement
to store and up to 80% grant aid. That is how they can put it
in, and I suspect in France they have got 40% grant aid as well,
but they have had grant assistance, and we are not going to have
grant assistance, as we have been told by the Minister so far.
Chairman: Okay. That is very helpful.
Thank you very much indeed, as always. Now we have got the Minister
coming to explain the other side of the story.
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