Pembrokeshire farmers deserve a break

Pembrokeshire’s farmers, already badly hit by plummeting milk prices are about to be hit again, this time with new regulations on the way they spread slurry on their land. Bear with me on this question which on the face of it is not one to gladden the heart. But believe me it has the potential to do enormous harm to farmers and our way of life in Pembrokeshire.

 

Farmers should have the option on when they spread their slurry

Every four years the Cleddau river catchment, which covers about 80 per cent of Pembrokeshire’s land area, is tested for nitrates that are largely caused by farm waste flowing into the water system. If they are too high they cause the growth of algae and other harmful organisms. In turn this upsets the fish and plant life that depend on the health of the waters in Milford Haven and the Marine Special Conservation Area beyond.

When the rivers were last tested in 2012 the nitrate levels almost reached the point where the Welsh Government would have been obliged to impose severe restrictions. The farming unions are resigned to this happening at the beginning of next year. Any day now a 12-week consultation period will be launched, followed by an appeals period, with restrictions likely to come into force from January 2017.

If a Nitrates Vulnerable Zone is declared it will have had a massive impact on the 1,800 Pembrokeshire farms that operate within the river catchment area. Farmers will be prevented from spreading slurry on their land between October and February, the winter months when most rainfall occurs. They will be required to ensure they have a capacity to store six months worth of slurry produced by their farms. And they will have to keep strict records of their nitrate discharges.

These new obligations and their costs could be enough to tip many farm operations, already running desperately close to going under, over the edge. Irreparable harm would be done, not just to the lives of the farming families but also to Wales’s agricultural industry. After all Pembrokeshire produces 25 per cent of the Wales’s dairy output and 50 per cent of our potato crop.

So what can be done? In the first place the Welsh Government must produce firm evidence that it is farm slurry that is the sole cause of the harmful nitrate levels. There could be other contributors, such as the Pembroke Power Station which abstracts water from the Haven for cooling, returning it at higher temperatures.

If restrictions are imposed they should be done voluntarily, in ways that mitigate their impact. There could be a collaborative approach between the farmers, the Welsh government and Natural Resources Wales. Farmers could be left to decide themselves when weather conditions allow for spreading slurry on their land. After all July and August can be exceedingly wet months and there are times when October or January can be relatively dry. There should be greater efforts to separate clean and dirty water on farms. For instance, rain run-off from the roofs and yards of farms should be prevented from flowing into slurry containers, with the result that they fill up and overflow.

Such an approach would be less easy to monitor and enforce than the imposition of strict controls. However, the gains for the farmers and the Pembrokeshire’s economy would make it worthwhile. Our farmers deserve the chance to make it work.

Tory split threatens Pembrokeshire in the EU

Ian Duncan Smith - "crocodile tears"

In the best part of a lifetime reporting on politics I cannot recall when a Conservative government was so bitterly divided. Ian Duncan Smith’s resignation last week was merely a surface manifestation of a fissure that runs deep through the party. I don’t buy Duncan Smith’s crocodile tears that his resignation was prompted by the proposed welfare cuts in the budget shambles. He has too much form of implementing cuts on the poorest in society over the past six years for that.

No, this was all about Europe. The headline in the Daily Express told you all you needed to know: “Tory split helps fight to free us from Brussels”. The Tory divisions are inevitably weakening the Yes side in the forthcoming referendum. Many voters still to make up their minds will undoubtedly take a lead from the Prime Minister and his Chancellor of the Exchequer. Their authority has been unquestionably been undermined by the events of the last week. And to that extent the strength of those arguing to remain inside the EU has been weakened as well.

Certainly, Pembrokeshire stands to lose heavily if by some misfortune Britain was to vote to leave the EU. First in the firing line would be our farmers. Wales will benefit by £1.7 billion between now and 2020 by Common Agricultural Policy Payments that support more than 80 per cent of farms. Moreover, if we were to leave, farmers would face tariff barriers at the borders of the EU which accounts for nearly the whole of our beef and lamb exports.

As for tourism, so vital for the Pembrokeshire economy, we have benefited from investment in developments such as the coastal path, while European water directives have ensured cleaner waters and beaches around our coast.

The fact is that Wales benefits from EU membership more than any other part of the UK, and within Wales our western rural areas and the Valleys benefit most of all. Wales is due to receive more than £3 billion of EU investment between 2014 and 2020, while Welsh exports to the EU will be worth in the region of £5.4 million.

Few would argue against dualling the 23 miles of the A40 between St Clears and Haverfordwest. It was proposed a decade ago but was put on ice by the Labour government in Cardiff which had other priorities. The only improvement since then has been the Robeston Wathen by-pass, completed in 2011 at a cost of £41.4 million. This was hugely necessary and indeed was first promised as long as the 1950s. The by-pass cut out an acute bottleneck in the village itself and removed an accident blackspot at Canaston Bridge. The European Convergence Fund contributed £20 million, nearly half the cost. Without it I very much doubt whether the by-pass would have been built. It’s just another example of how continued EU membership is so vital to Pembrokeshire’s interests.

Slurry threat to Blue Flag beaches

Pembrokeshire’s Blue Flag beaches, so important for the county’s image and tourist offer, are under threat from Welsh Government environmental regulations imposed at the behest of the European Union. How could such a situation have come about? You might well ask. Bear with me, for this is a complicated tale.

Every four years the Cleddau river catchment, which covers about 80 per cent of Pembrokeshire’s land area, is tested for nitrates that are largely caused by farm waste flowing into the water system. If they are too high they cause the growth of algae and other harmful organisms. In turn this upsets the fish and plant life that depend on the health of the waters in Milford Haven and the Marine Special Conservation Area beyond.

When the rivers were last tested in 2012 the nitrate levels almost reached the point where the Welsh Government would have been obliged to impose severe restrictions. As Ged Davies, Pembrokeshire Team Leader for Natural Resources Wales told me, “It was too close to call.”

If a Nitrates Vulnerable Zone had been declared it would have had a massive impact on the 1,800 farms that operate within the river catchment area. There would have been severe limits on the amount of muck spreading, a requirement for much greater winter slurry storage capacity, a clamp down on fertilizers, and strict record keeping of nitrate discharges.

It now looks inevitable that all this will be demanded following the latest measurement of nitrate levels. A report goes to the Welsh Government in October and it will make an announcement early next year with the likely imposition of a Nitrates Zone from the beginning of 2017.

If this happens farmers will be faced with a stark choice: to either reduce the livestock on their land and consequently their income, or increase the amount of land for muck spreading. Many will opt for the latter and look first to buying or renting land immediately adjacent to the Nitrates Zone. The problem is that much of this is next to the coast. As Ged Davies says, “The land outside the Nitrate Vulnerable Zone would likely be in the coastal fringe, in the National Park, and draining to bathing waters. This land would be available for unregulated and potential over applications of slurry. This could have the unforeseen effect of the Nitrates Directive adversely affecting the Bathing Water Directive.”

Hence the threat to EU designated Blue Flag beaches that is coming from EU environmental regulations. So what can be done? One option is for farmers to work with Natural Resources Wales on a voluntary basis to reduce their nitrate output. Ged Davies points to a successful scheme that has operated in recent years among farmers supplying the First Milk cheese processing plant at Merlins Bridge.

If initiatives of this kind could be undertaken across Pembrokeshire there is a chance we could avoid the imposition of a Nitrate Vulnerable Zone in 2017 and the unintended consequences that would be likely to follow for our Blue Flag beaches. But for that to happen there should be an injection of urgency with action taken now.

Pembrokeshire’s experiment with badgers

The eve of the Pembrokeshire Show is a good moment to explore the most bitterly contested issue that has dominated farming in recent years. I’m raising, of course, what to do about badgers and their infecting cattle with TB. I confess that when I took part in hustings in Preseli on behalf of Plaid Cymru in the general election earlier this year this was the question I dreaded most, because there is no straightforward answer.

I’m deeply sympathetic to the plight of farmers whose herds become infected with TB. It is a devastating experience, both financially and emotionally. But I’ve never been persuaded that culling badgers is the answer. It’s not because I have a sentimental attitude towards these attractive-looking creatures who feature so prominently in the story books of small children. If I was persuaded that culling worked, then reluctantly I would support it.

But all the evidence I’ve managed to gather persuades me that culling has the opposite effect of what is intended. As Mike Joseph, a writer based near Fishguard who has investigated the impact of culling has argued, killing badgers creates chaos in their lives. The territorial systems of this most social of animals break down. Badgers that survive a cull range more widely. Meanwhile, badgers from neighbouring areas move in to colonise newly-culled territory. Confrontations and fighting result from the breakdown of stable territories, increasing injuries and infection. Along the cull area boundary, and for some considerable distance beyond it, the rate of badger TB increases. And that results in more cattle being put at risk and more being infected. So any benefits of reduced transmission at the heart of a cull area, are offset by increased transmission around the perimeter.

Fortunately, some years ago the Welsh government acknowledged this reality. Instead of culling they began a five-year experiment to establish whether vaccinating badgers is the answer. We are now three years into the scheme and so far about 4,000 doses of vaccine have been administered to badgers that have been trapped in north Pembrokeshire. The so-called intensive action area covers about 288 sq km along the coast just north of, but mainly to the south, of the Teifi where it is estimated there are around 300 main badger setts.

It is an expensive business that will cost about £5m over the five years. And we won’t know until the five years are up whether it has been successful. But the fact is that any option for dealing with TB in cattle is expensive. Doing nothing would be the most expensive option. In the first four months of this year alone, 11,000 cattle were slaughtered across the UK because of TB.

Culling badgers is continuing in England and likely to prove counter-productive. Meanwhile, in Wales a range of other measures are accompanying our vaccination experiment. In particular, every herd of cattle across the country is tested for TB every 12 months, and infected cattle dealt with immediately. At the same time farmers at risk are being helped with a range of measures to separate their cattle from contact with badgers. The result is that over the last five years the numbers of cattle in Wales being slaughtered because of TB has been reduced by 45 per cent and 94 per cent of our herds are now TB-free.