1) Brittany the Wales’s of France with similar issues on nutrient management. Did the NVZ help?
Brittany where I am from was a poor and under-developed area of France even after the 2nd World war, very few industries, poor connectionsto the rest of France and across it. Most people were farming the land on verysmall acreages, family-owned mixed subsistence farming.
Figure 1: Brittany had a revolution similar to the one that took place in Wales on a different rang of productions, those led to dire consequences in terms of water pollution - Corentin Canévet: Brittany's Farming Model (1992, PUR)
But through the second half of the 20th century Brittany was transformed into one of the most enterprising and dynamic regions of France.This was done through agriculture and it’s supply chain. Associated infrastructures were also upgraded to cater for those needs. The community of small farms from Brittany embraced the move and upscaled massively livestock-based production, specialising with the 20th century agricultural revolution* tools and mitigating their small size by using increased amounts of inputs and using newly adapted high energy crops (like maize). Though it brought some prosperity to the area it also led to an explosion of the amount of manures (of all types), while the evolution of the cropping system led to a decrease in ground cover, heavy manure application at the point where soils and crops could not absorb it. Leaching was widespread, water tables and rivers were reamed with nutrients (leading sometimes to human health concerns). It had a direct environment impact triggering eutrophication in waterbodies as well as algae blooms, with impacts on the flora and the fauna.
Figure 2: Algae Bloom on a beach in Brittany, those have been devastating for areas depending heavily on tourism, it is certain that those led to some deaths of pets and people (Wikimédia Commons)
Nitrate Vulnerable Zone (NVZ) rules have been applied to the whole of Brittany since 1994, as the vastmajority of watercourses were in breach of the EU water pollution regulation.It’s implementation (further down the line in 2004) lead to a high subsidysupport to adapt farm infrastructure and practices in every catchment. This was done as a co-management, political power treading as lightly as possible in between the environmental, human impact and the impact on farming system(economically, logic…). This has been relatively successful getting many waterways under the threshold, though Brittany still suffers from Algae Blooms.
Nota: NVZ have been introduced in 1991 by the EU as part of the nitrate directive to tackle waterpollution problems linked to leaching from agricultural sources. The main bit about it is a 170kg of Nitrogen/ha limit from animal origin. An action programme has to be attached to it, and one is supposed to produce a guide of expected agricultural management with storage requirements, larger rotation and fertilizer policy restrictions. Basically it is made of prescriptions and record keeping with a “country-wide” approach.
*The 20th century agricultural revolution covers a range of transformation gearing farming towards increased outputs per acre and per worker through the increased use of capital and inputs; the moto-mechanization of farming, use of fertilizer…
2) The manure problem in Wales. A need for a systemic thinking to understand and address the issue:
I have been working on Wales farming for more than 3 years now, interviewed many farmers, of all farming types, including some that do not necessarily comply with NVZ regulations. I do not believe that the approach of the NVZ is appropriate to tackle Wales effluents of animal origin. In a world where resources are becoming scarcer, we shouldn’t see animal manure as a problem but as an opportunity. Do you remember the time when a farmer’s prosperity was assessed through the size of its muckheap? At a time where farm inputs are more expensive than ever there is a need to make the best use of what we have on farms and existing biological processes.
Figure 3: The NVZ a Nitrogen focused policy. Dealing with the policy on farms (By the author)
Among challenges for a best use of animal muck is the land availability challenge with many parts of modern farms being miles away from the homestead. Often the land close to the homestead (at least on lowland) would receive the heaviest of the muck. Manure, particularly slurry with a high moisture content are highly inefficient to cart around (not to mention potential compaction of fields during its application). The next problem being to put it at a time when the plants need it to grow and in good weather conditions for it not to leach away (and be absorbed). But those applications also have to match the mix of nutrients needed by the plants (Maize or grass have very different needs (N, P, K..), timewise, and quantity wise depending also on varieties used). One also has to consider the biological processes of soils in the frequency and amounts spread. Finally depending on the rules in some land lease agreements there might be restrictions on what can be spread on top of the dispersed nature of some holdings.
Figure 4: Growth of the crop and manura application, the example of Maize (By the author)
But all the above is constrained by the amount of storage available. And on many farms, market forces in agriculture over the last 30 years pushed the number of animals on farms without necessarily as much of an increase in land size or of manure storage capacity (often compounded by the rainfall amount in Wales. Besides spreading manure has to be done carefully to give it time to decompose before grazing it with cattle for sanitary reasons, and exchanges between farms have to be limited.
As a result of those constraints, too often, Nutrient Management Plans tend to not to represent the reality of what is happening on the ground.
Depending on the farming system strategy for similar livestock units there are very different level of production out of the animals resulting in different quantities and qualities of manure being produced. Likewise, the environment varies wildly on the scale of Wales, or within a small region as I have seen through my fieldwork. Soil types or microclimates heavily impact the local conditions, grass might start to grow 2 weeks earlier on one side of the valley compared to the bottom. And on Pembrokeshire’s early soils grass would never really stop growing during winter. Not to mention the amount of rainfall in the pit!
I do not believe that we should see slurry as a hazard but as an opportunity, thinking about it as a way to reduce our reliance on imported inputs that contribute little to the welsh economy. Setting up uniform prescriptions on the whole of Wales seems a relatively outdated way to deal with the leaching of nutrient. If you can improve the value of manure to allow them to be efficiently incorporated at the right time and substituted to the use of inorganic fertilizer. If precision technologies are said to represent the future of farming a uniform prescriptive NVZ is not a very modern nor an efficient use, besides I think that given the agrarian history we should know that solving this issue will have require some systemic thinking, as André Pochon repeatedly told us.
Figure 5: Young maize crop in Pembrokeshire, André Pochon questions if Maize really is the best crop to make good use of the manure available on farms in some case? (By the author)
I also advocate that in less than 5 years it is likely that many farms will have gone through the Sustainable Farming Scheme whole farm assessments (Welsh Government 2020) that will cover the different elements of the functioning of the farm (holistic, systemic? Let’s hope so). It would be possible to check or adapt Nutrient Management Plans for farms at that time. Systemic changes to adapt farming system with gradual investments strategies could be drawn up to change the focus of those systems at that time.
3) Who would lose the most from the implementation of the NVZ?
The speed and scale of the implementation of the 2021 NVZ in Wales requires a quick and immediate fix on non-compliant farms, be it regulatory wise or paperwork wise.
Figure 6: From the fieldwork in Pembrokeshire (Lenormand, T. 2019) dairy farms nearly all fall under the 250 kg N/ha and the smallest ones, the ones said to be in danger, under 170kg N/ha (By the author)
While working in Pembrokeshire, I realized the amount of land held by farms and the type of farming system made them comply mostly with the derogatory rule for grass-based farming system but not necessarily with the lower threshold. Therefore, the problems as explained above are not only getting enough land most of the time and certainly run deeper than that, as we have explored above.
The imminent implementation of an all Wales impacts mostly high-added value, nutrient rich farms, usually high inputs ones (Dairy farms, Poultry farms…). Some, solid ones financially can splash the cash to deal with the issue; either by renting, buying (taking loans more easily) or rearing out some animals. But small dairy farms and cattle smallholder for which their size combined to the market parameters and potentially social elements does not allow those transformations. They might want to avoid the extra paperwork and the infrastructure work to adapt, some have made the choice to do away with cattle or retiring. If the burden of paperwork is the only issue some might “link their holding” with a short of land one, effectively becoming contractors.
Figure 7: Hen shed south of Morlaix (Brittany), the development of those high added value productions will be marginally impacted given their ability to pay for land (By the author).
The problem for many is it represents extra work for absolutely no income gain or any other type of gains as it is only a prescription measure. Margins on many farming systems are quite thin meaning that those extra measure can be difficult to implement without painful decision or a rethinking of the farming system (extension and economies of scale, reorientation towards high added value production systems…).
We are already witnessing some additional pressure on the land market. There are reports coming in that it is to deal with the new regulation. Overall, it leads to some parts of the landscape starting to be used differently, with more slurry/manure being spread, a higher production being asked from it to compensate for the cost. For example, some rugged hill land has been bought in this regard and will be managed very differently in the future.
To summarize; I wish the approach was more gradual and systemic to adapt the response to each case and help build a sustainable future for Welsh farming and rural communities not remove farms from the land. We were the one to incentivize farmers in a productivity focused specialisation through 50 years of policies, it seems tough to blame them after 15 years where they faced many hardships. A systemic change doesn’t happen immediately and needs to carefully consider what is at hand and the conditions of the farmed landscape. The future Welsh scheme represents a timely opportunity to deal with it from the farm perspective.
I would conclude that farming is an industry that is under pressure, where the suicide rate is particularly high. Farmers take many risks on their shoulder, this is difficult, margins are thin. Given the future challenges lying ahead of us in the way we manage our agro-ecosystem, we need a dense community of family farms. The NVZ does nothing to help in this regard but adds further strain.
Théo Lenormand
