15 March, 2002

John Sheard delves into some of the mysteries behind this week's bitter debate on the EU's so-called Nitrate Directive.

LET'S assume - and I think this is a reasonable assumption - that very few people in Britain have ever heard of a Nitrate Directive. The few that have, realising that it is yet another piece of legislation from Brussels, have probably filed it away in the "So what?" compartment.

Trouble is, this is potentially a very important proposal for anyone who loves our countryside and, in particular, the rivers, streams and becks which weave their way through it like silver stitching in a green dress.

As most gardeners know, nitrates are good for growth, whether it be your back lawn or a dairy farmer's pasture.

But if they are used to excess, and leach off the land into our waterways, they cause very serious pollution to aquatic plants and insects, which, in turn, are the bottom of the food chain for fish and various waterside birds like kingfishers and dippers.

In some parts of Britain - including parts of the East Riding near Driffield - watercourses have become so polluted with nitrates that at one stage the local authorities were having to consider a total ban on new building because the water supply was not fit for human consumption.

Now, the EU is trying to reduce nitrate use, whether in artificial form - which should be easy - or in manure, or rather slurry, which farmers keep in large, expensive and ugly slurry tanks before spraying it on their land at "muck-spreading time" - which starts any day now.

The Government, going along with EU guidelines, is thinking of making the whole of England, or at least 80% of it, a nitrate control zone, which had the farmers fuming: in a very rare step indeed, the National Farmers' Union and the Country Landowners' Association got together to fire off a letter of protest to DEFRA Secretary of State Margaret Beckett.

They say it will cost agriculture "billions" to keep up present production levels without nitrates - which, frankly, is probably true.

But people here seem to be missing the point. On both sides. We all know that farming is on the verge of a new dawn, with environmental values taking precedence over production. Fewer animals will eat less grass and therefore cause lower demand for nitrates.

On the Government (or EU) side, there are now dozens of specially built plants in Northern Europe which refine slurry using "green technology" in such a way as to produce hot water for local villages, non-polluting methane gas used to generate electricity, a dry odour-free compost ideal for use back on the farm - or in the garden!

Sadly (but not surprisingly) there is only one such plant in England and that is at an "experimental" stage. Surely, here we have an opportunity for co-operation, not confrontation, between Government and agriculture.

Let DEFRA build the slurry plants, let the farmers sell them their slurry, and use the methane and compost produced to pay back the taxpayers' investment. There really could be money where this muck is - but has any the imagination to collect?