Of the three main environmental pressures coming at the NI farming industry, it is probably the whole issue of water quality that poses the greatest immediate challenge.

Unlike the issues surrounding greenhouse gas emissions and ammonia emissions from agriculture, the impact of farming on water quality is clearly visible for everyone to see via algal blooms in some of our most important waterbodies.

The main contributing factor to those blooms, which comes from farming, is excess phosphorus (P), mainly originating from concentrate feed that passes through the animal and into slurry. While pollution incidents might catch the headlines, it has been a slow and gradual release of P over many decades that is the core issue.

To help tackle the problem, the Nitrates Action Programme (NAP) was introduced in 2007 and brought with it closed periods for spreading slurry. The NAP has been revised three times since then (2010, 2014 and 2019) and renamed the Nutrients Action Programme.

Radical

While each NAP revision has brought ever-tightening rules, it is the latest proposals for a NAP running from 2026 to 2029 that are by far, the most radical. Ultimately, buried in the document is a scenario where if things don’t improve in a water catchment, the Department could force farmers to reduce livestock numbers. How that would actually work in practice is difficult to imagine, but it is not a scenario any of us would want to see played out. To avoid that, there is no doubt that more intensive farmers will have to take on board advice and actions around how to reduce the surplus of P. But DAERA must recognise there is a balance to be struck around protecting the environment, while also supporting jobs and livelihoods. Some compromises in the NAP will have to be found.

There is also an onus on the Department to properly educate farmers and incentivise compliance with all the NAP rules – it is something it failed to do in recent years.