The 25 Year Environment Plan was clear: in the future 'the polluter pays'. In its recent draft Clean Air Strategy the Government seeks to tackle air pollution, the fourth greatest threat to human health after cancer, heart disease and obesity. Achieving this will have significant implications for agriculture and potentially affect production methods and productivity.

Previous legislation to hit air pollution targets tended to focus on easy wins in industries with a small number of large players. As major polluters have cleaned up their emissions, smaller sources such as manure spreading on farms and open fires in homes have become responsible for a larger proportion of the remaining pollution, so the focus is now on, amongst others, farmers.

Today agriculture generates 88 per cent of the UK’s ammonia emissions. 75 per cent of these can be attributed to livestock production, with the remaining 23 per cent linked to artificial fertiliser applications. Within the livestock sector cattle account for the largest proportion of ammonia emissions.

The Government says it 'will be bold in its ambition but practical in its approach', and proposes a range of regulatory actions to cut ammonia emissions. Some would be straightforward to implement, such as incorporating solid manure and digestate into soil within 12 hours by 2022 and requiring urea-based fertilisers to include a urease inhibitor by 2020. Others will require investment or affect the farm’s output.

It is proposed that larger dairy farms would be brought within the Environmental Permitting Regime, as used for intensive pig and poultry operations. Securing and retaining a permit may require on-farm upgrades to ensure their production uses specified Best Available Techniques.

To reduce emissions from manure and slurry it is proposed that by 2027 slurry stores and manure heaps are covered and all slurry and digestate would be spread by low-emission spreading equipment. This will lead to greater use of contractors due to the higher capital cost of trailing shoe/hose or injection machinery.

A further proposal is to set nitrogen application limits at a lower level so that they reduce ammonia emissions enough to meet the targets. Presently rates are based on economic efficiency, so giving environmental aspects a stronger weighting in the calculation would reduce crop yields, sacrificing productivity.

Air pollution control could however have some positive impacts for crop yields too. In a typical year ground-level ozone damage is estimated to reduce yields of wheat, potato and oilseed rape by around 5 per cent. 

The Government plans to achieve its objectives by requiring farmers to make the necessary investments in farm infrastructure and equipment. While the rhetoric is that 'the polluter pays', the strategy suggests funding will be available to help farms upgrade and cut their emissions.

Farmers would therefore be well advised to take advantage of the support while it is offered because it is likely that they will be penalised for remaining emissions in the future.

Further information

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