Managing the Rural Environment

Action on GHGs builds momentum (09 May 2012)

The agricultural industry in England is making significant progress in reducing its greenhouse gas (GHGs) emissions, according to the Greenhouse Gas Action Plan's (GHGAP) first progress report to Government.

The new report sets out the work the industry is undertaking to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by three million tonnes of CO2 equivalents by the third carbon budget period, without compromising domestic production.

The Action Plan is making a difference by uniting the industry in key priority areas which will have a positive effect on both GHG emissions and production efficiency on farms. Agricultural levy bodies, the supply industry and advisory bodies are all collaborating to give farmers the benefit of greater consistency and clarity of messages as well as directing them to credible tools, services and contacts.

Plans are advancing for provision of an innovative pilot Farm Efficiency Hub – a reliable up-to-date electronic library service to support farm advisers in their daily work but also openly available to farmers and land managers.

Building on the GHGAP’s early momentum, the partnership has also designed the next phase Delivery Plan through to 2015, in which 25 key actions are proposed. These will include close attention to the planning of livestock health and nutrition - to achieve this, the GHGAP partners will work with the well-established Tried & Tested campaign that is already supported by joined-up industry action. This will be coupled with plans to create a training standard for farm feed advisers.

CLA Deputy President and GHGAP co–chairman Henry Robinson said: “Avoiding harmful climate change is in the interest of everybody, including farmers and other land managers. The progress demonstrated by the industry is significant and every effort should be made by the Government to reward and encourage all land managers to ensure future emissions are not just exported to other countries.

"We are determined to show that the land sector can be part of the greenhouse gas solution."

Consultation on Implementation of the Nitrates Directive in England 2013-2016 (20 December 2011)

The consultation raises the issue of whether to continue with discrete designation of NVZs in England or take up the option of designating all of England as a single NVZ.
If discrete designations were to continue there would still need to be an appeals process.

The remainder of the document covers potential changes to the current Action plan in the following areas:

A. Rates and limits on the field application of organic manures and manufactured nitrogen fertilisers
B. Closed spreading periods
C. Restrictions on manure spreading
D. Storage of organic manures
E. Planning nutrient use and keeping records
F. Cover crops

The consultation can be found at the following link

NVZ deadline for slurry storage approaches (18 January 2011)

The transition period for most farmers to put in place the storage required by the NVZ rules ends this year (1st January 2012).  The Environment Agency have published a Postition Statement describing the approach they will be taking.

It is important that members check to make sure that they are in an NVZ or not.  Make sure that any planning requirements have been sought and contractors for work have been engaged.

Attached is the position statement as well as the link to the website:

Note that as well as Cross Compliance the Environment Agency can use civil and criminal sanctions (fines) to ensure compliance.

For further information please follow this link to the  Environment Agency website that contains some fact sheets and a NVZ Q&A.

The Tide is High: CLA Vision for Water

The CLA has launched a policy paper; The Tide is High: CLA Vision for Water. It is a reminder to Government how important water issues are.

With larger populations and accelerating climate change, water supply will become more challenging as will maintaining water quality. The risks from these and serious flooding, require the right policy framework to tackle the challenges and allow solutions to be implemented. CLA Head of Environment Derek Holliday has developed the paper with Policy and Environment Committee members and CLA members to raise the important issues. The paper is very timely considering the Government has recently announced another Water Bill and a Natural Environment White Paper in 2011 as well as consultations on flood and erosion risk.

CLA Policy On The Environment

The rural environment is a key issue for the CLA. All of our members work on or surrounded by the rural environment, as providers of fibre, food, fuel, game, habitats, landscapes, minerals, rural tourism, timber, land and buildings. They have a real desire to preserve its value for future generations.

The CLA calls on the Government to:

• Encourage the efficient use of water in agriculture,
• Promote reservoirs on farms by deregulating their use where there is no significant risk to human safety, and
• Introduce a more flexible licensing system for storage so that abstraction can take advantage of high flows.

Other CLA Environment web pages:

• Climate Change
• Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk
• Fly-Tipping

News:

Common sense Conservation – Can we manage wildlife better

Richard Benyon MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for the Natural Environment was the guest speaker at a thought-provoking seminar that proposed a radical way forward for wildlife legislation on 21 December..

Speakers from the CLA and the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) argued that bureaucracy has replaced common sense when it comes to managing wildlife. They urged the Government to consider a radically different approach, by replacing the complex tangle of wildlife legislation with a single statute that would offer basic protection to all British wildlife. Despite the poor weather the seminar was attended by more than 50 MPs and leading conservationists

CLA Legal and Policy Director Christopher Price and Dr Stephen Tapper from the GWCT highlighted some of the problems within current legislation and set out a potential way forward, while Government Minister Richard Benyon MP, set out the Government’s latest thinking on this issue.

Outlining the Government’s view, Mr Benyon said: “The current wildlife management legislation is overly complex making it difficult to understand and we are looking at whether it can be reviewed. We need simpler legislation in place that still offers appropriate protection to all wildlife in England.”

To accompany the seminar, the CLA and GWCT produced an informative briefing document that puts into context the complexities of our current wildlife legislation, and how it can inhibit sound conservation. For example, some of the main legislation protects animals through a series of lists. Species are typically added to these lists simply because they are scarce and not because protection is going to improve their conservation. European Directives and Regulations have added further restrictions to our wildlife law, which in some cases don’t even make sense in an English context.

Dr Stephen Tapper explained: “England’s wildlife legislation is a maze of nearly 50 overlapping statutes, old and new that cover the management of wild animals. Mostly they are confusing and ambiguous and the situation is compounded by bizarre decisions from Europe which misunderstand ecology. We believe that common sense conservation should prevail and a first step would be to junk it all and write something better. This simpler approach would free farmers and other land managers from excessive bureaucracy and encourage them to welcome the presence of wildlife on their land. “

Summing up how this might work, Christopher Price said: "The laws we have for conserving biodiversity are complicated, overlapping and in many cases counterproductive. All too often the result is a system that discourages land managers from making provision for wildlife when we want them doing precisely the opposite. What was intended as a balanced and proportionate system is bogged down by overly prescriptive guidance and some rather unhelpful judicial interventions.

“We need to go back to first principles and determine what it is we want to protect, what activities should, in general terms, be permitted and how to go about keeping the regulatory burden to the minimum level necessary. I hope that this paper will get people thing about these issues.”


CLA talks to Governement about changes to Environmental Stewardship

The President of the CLA has written a joint letter with other industry partners to the Minister of State for Agriculture and Food following the European Court of Auditors concluding that Environmental Stewardship is non-compliant with European regulations.

The industry has questioned why the Court of Auditors and the Rural Development Programme (RDP) teams in Europe are effectively operating in a total vacuum from one another with the RDP team effectively signing off ‘illegal’ programmes. This results in Member States suffering costly disallowance penalties with further public money having to be used to put the programmes right. All of which could be avoided if the schemes were checked and found to be ‘legal’ from the onset. The industry have asked the Government what it is proactively doing to manage the Commissions own competence in this area. (Updated 20 August 2010.)

Please see agricultural environment professional advice page for information as to how this may affect you.

Environmental Stewardship and the Public Spending Review

The CLA’s Conservation Adviser Claire Collyer has met with senior Defra officials to discuss ways to make the schemes more effective, both in terms of cost savings and delivering environmental outcomes. She highlighted that Environmental Stewardship (ES) has been a great success since it allowed farmers and land managers to embed integrated environmental management into their businesses, leading to more than 69 percent of farmland covered by some form of scheme by the end of June 2010.   Further information can be found in the latest Working for You, Edition 100.  (Updated 20 August 2010.)

Fertiliser Manual

Members growing cereals should look at the new Fertiliser Manual, available on the Tried & Tested website.

It gives the latest research so that nutrients can be applied with minimum waste and environmental damage. It has been produced with CLA input. Read the full background here. (June 2010)

Revised maps of Nitrate Vulnerable Zones (NVZ)

Defra's revised maps of Nitrate Vulnerable Zones (NVZ), reducing the area affected by nine percent, are a huge boost for hundreds of farmers. The change comes after hard lobbying by the CLA for land which was wrongly included in the NVZ to be taken out.

CLA Head of Environment Derek Holiday said: "This affects 18 catchments across England. Hundreds of farmers would otherwise have faced increased costs, particularly for the storage of slurry."

He warned that members should check the revised mpas carefully. Around 350 appeals against inclusion in the NVZ were upheld last year and the land has been removed from the zones.

In some cases, a body of water had wrongly been identified as polluted. All land draining into that water has also been removed from the NVZ. (Updated: 18 May 2010.)

Find maps of the NVZs

Report Fly-tipping - Don't Suffer In Silence

The CLA urges all members in the West Midlands and the North-West to report fly-tipping on their land to their regional offices. The pilot project recording incidents on private land has been extended to September.

If private owners forget to report incidents, the Government is likely to gain a false picture of the incidence of fly-tipping. Please ring your regional office if it happens on your land, so that they can report it, via The Landowner Partnership Project, onto the Flycapture database.

We have had some success in reporting incidents, but many remain unreported. The CLA is trying to address fly-tipping issues with Defra and the Environment Agency. Derek Holliday has re-emphasised the CLA's three-point plan to combat the problem at a meeting of he National Fly-Tipping and Prevention Group.

The CLA continues to lobby ministers to:

• Ensure local authorities accept fly-tipped waste without charge to landowners,
• Stop prosecution of those who have waste, especially hazardous waste, dumped on their land, and
• Create a policy framework so that local authorities work with police and other bodies on a zero-tolerance approach to perpetrators.

Private Water Supplies - New Regulation Means More Costs

If you are a member drinking water from your own well, a borehole or a spring, or using water from someone other than a licensed water supplier, your local authority (LA) will soon be in touch. LAs now have to carry out risk assessments, for which you will pay - probably around £150, though the maximum is set at £500. (February 2010)

Read our guidance note on the new Private Water Supplies Regulation (members only).

Agriculture Industry Greenhouse Gas Action Plan

This action plan, published on 10 February 2010, gives an initial framework to show how agriculture could make its greenhouse gas (GHG) savings. The Government is seeking national emission cuts across all sectors of 18 percent from 2008 levels by 2020.

The agricultural industry must achieve substantial voluntary reductions by 2012, or the Government may impose regulations. This means finding reductions of three million tonnes CO2 (or equivalent) or 11 percent reduction of GHG by 2020.

It is important that our agricultural sector in England and Wales remains strong as we work towards these reductions. If not, we will simply export food production and emissions to other countries.

Savings will come from efficiency

Most savings must come from higher efficiency, rather than reduced food production. More food will be needed in coming years to feed a vastly bigger population. The industry will need to:

• Improve the use of nutrients for crops,
• Change livestock diets,
• Improve animal housing and health,
• Improve management of manures and soils,
• Use anaerobic digestors, and
• Use fuel and energy more efficiently and substitute low-carbon renewable fuels where possible.

At present, agriculture in the UK produces about seven percent of UK greenhouse gas. Of these about:

• 3.5 percent is nitrous oxide from the soil, much of it an inevitable part of using fertilisers, organic or mineral,
• 2.8 percent is methane, mainly from livestock and some from manure and slurry, and
• 0.7 percent is carbon dioxide, from energy use by vehicles, machinery, heating and so on.

The Government asked the Climage Change Taskforce, which was set up by the CLA, the National Farmers Union and the Agricultural Industries Confederation in 2007, to develop this voluntary plan. It gives a framework to show how savings could be made, and indicators to measure them.

Read the full report: Agriculture Industry GHG Action Plan: Framework for Action.

New Guidance on Uplands ELS for Landlords, Tenants and Commoners

The Tenancy Reform Industry Group has issued a new guidance document on the transition for landlords and tenants to the Uplands Entry Level Stewardship (ELS) scheme. This covers the end of the Hill Farm Allowance and the move to the new support. Defra gives full details - download this TRIG guidance from their page - following their link. Farmers can enter this scheme from 1 July 2010. (February 2010.)

New guidance has also been published for commoners in the uplands by Natural England - dowload it from their ELS page.

Changes to the Environmental Stewardship Scheme

From 1 February 2010, the new 3rd Edition Environmental Stewardship Handbooks for Entry Level Stewardship (ELS), Organic Entry Level Stewardship (OELS) and Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) became operational as the legal basis for ES agreements. More details from www.naturalengland.org.uk

CLA Environment Guidance Notes

CLA Government Responses

Links to external websites

Defra: www.defra.gov.uk

Environment Agency: www.environment-agency.gov.uk

Natural England: www.naturalengland.org.uk

Voluntary Initiative: www.voluntaryinitiative.org.uk

Environment sensitive farming: http://www.environmentsensitivefarming.co.uk/

Farm Wildlife: Events, Case Studies and Discussion Forums for farmers helping wildlife on their land: www.farmwildlife.info

Farming Futures: http://www.farmingfutures.org.uk/