15 June, 2001

John Sheard believes that some good could come from the foot and mouth crisis in the form of cleaner waterways

THE trout-fishing season on the river I fish in Cumbria starts on the Ides of March, March 15. I missed it for only the third time in 30 years this spring because the banks had been closed under foot and mouth restrictions.

Last week, they opened a short stretch to anglers and I dashed of in haste. Then my high hopes were dashed too because, to my dismay, I found the rocks and gravel in this once crystal clear river were covered by a disgusting brown-green scum.

This is not only unsightly and dangerous - it was like wading in an oil slick - but also fundamentally damaging to the aquatic eco-system. Here was a clear-cut case of eutrification.

I have referred to this condition briefly once before but it now deserves a longer explanation. Eutrification means, simply, an artificial enrichment of the water, just like gardeners enrich their soil with manure.

That may be good for vegetables but it can mean death to the tiny insect larvae which live in water and form the base of the aquatic food chain for fish and birds like heron, kingfishers and dippers.

Now I have no desire to join the townies who have attacked the farmers at this awful time, but that fact of the matter is that most of this over-enrichment is caused by either artificial fertilisers leached from the land or, worse still, by effluent from silage clamps - one of the deadliest poisons known for aquatic life.

And the reason why farmers have been using so much expensive artificial fertiliser, and have changed from traditional hay-making to silage, is the 50-year-old obsession of MAFF for ever increasing food production from smaller and smaller amounts of land.

Well, MAFF is now dead, as we predicted some weeks ago. The new Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has been charged with taking a root and branch look at British farming methods.

With any luck, they will come to the conclusion that our farmers should be paid less to over-produce food and more to look after the countryside, and that includes our rivers, streams, becks and canals.

Apart from anything else, they would save cash on artificial fertiliser. And more haymaking would mean more traditional wild flower meadows, which in my childhood were one of the crowning glories of the countryside.

I don't expect farmers who have lost their lives' work to agree with me - not yet, anyway, until the grief has faded a little - but I firmly hope that the catastrophic cloud hanging over our countryside may yet turn out to have a silver lining.

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Comments

About how many years does the process of eutrification take?


I would like to share the romantic view of haymedows too but surely they must have disappeared because their demand and profitability disappeared. Perhaps focus on more 'environmentaly friendly' farming methods is an idea.

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