Farmers need a new strategy on Nitrates Directive

There are times when trying to win a battle means you lose the war. The debate about the derogation from the Nitrates Directive is one of those occasions.

Farming is a big part of who we have been and who we are. It has a big and important future. We need secure sources of good food and we need our land and natural environment to be not only protected but well stewarded. That requires people to live on the land and make a decent income from it. Those are causes worth fighting for.

But the campaign run by the farmers’ organisations on the Nitrates Directive has done damage to that cause.

It is of course understandable why some farmers might not like the reduction in the volume of nitrates that they can spread. The campaign about it has been – to put it mildly – vigorous. In short, the farmers making this case want to retain an exemption which allowed them to spread more nitrates on the land than current EU-wide rules allow.

But a wiser strategy would be to not push against the tide. For sometimes in any society there are sea changes, moments where something happens and the prevailing way of seeing and doing things change. When those things come around, they crystallise something which has been brewing a long time. The Marriage Equality referendum was one of those moments. Another is the way ideas of how we provide housing in Ireland have been transformed by the crisis in that sector. There is no end to other examples.

Another one of those is happening right now, based on two obvious trends. Firstly, Ireland is increasingly an urban society and secondly, its people are increasingly concerned about the environment. That trend to urbanism is not confined to the cities and big towns. People are living urban lives all over ‘rural’ Ireland.

The concern about the environment – driven by young people but now widely shared across the generations – is approaching storm force: someone soon is going to feel its full blast. It is – to quote the movie – the wind that will shake the barley. What are the signs of it?

They are all around. When farm leaders talk about being unwilling to reduce the amount of nitrates they spread on the land, do they think that people cannot join the dots? Do they not know what people were thinking when they couldn’t swim in lakes and beaches all over Ireland – and the west – for large parts of this summer? Do they not appreciate that people know well what the word ‘nitrates’ so often means – it means slurry, pumped onto fields using large industrial machinery. And do they not know that people – even urban people – know that lots of that slurry is ending up in the water – the water we swim in, the water the fish and marine life live in, the water we ultimately drink?

Report after report as well as the lived experience of all of us confirms that is so. The derogation in the Nitrates Directive was granted so that farmers – and yes, others too, responsible for forestry and human waste – could take steps to improve water quality. It hasn’t happened. One farm leader said the derogation should be maintained because water quality would be ‘significantly better’ when the next set of results comes out. But at what point does a society say, enough? That point is coming. It will create a new reality where there will be no tolerance for low environmental standards.

For in Ireland generally, as in farming specifically, new realities are created all the time. And the truth is that the highly industrialised and mechanised form of farming that has been making a case for continued high levels of nitrate usage these past few weeks is relatively new itself.

The people making the argument in favour of how they do things now are entitled to make it – and if some of your or my income were threatened, we would no doubt do the same. But they should perhaps think about the way to make the case and be sure they don’t lose support by fighting for a particular way of doing things that will inevitably have to change. Any sector or group needs to be aware of what their case means not just today, but in the next year, five years, ten years, for generations to come. Making an argument that you should continue to get an opt-out from a very basic level of rules to protect our water already looks bad: it is going to look increasingly so. Sticking to it might fatally undermine the farmers’ case on any number of other topics before too long.

For how long will it be before an event occurs that grips the country and demands action, like a child out for a swim getting seriously ill, or a fish kill on a scale that we have not yet experienced, or footage like we saw in Lough Neagh in the north last week, where the water in parts has turned into a kind of green soup because of all the excessive nitrates flooding into it? And listen to those who know our lakes right here in our region before you think we are a long way off that. And yes, the water quality issue is most serious in the south and east of Ireland but it is a problem everywhere.

No one is saying that farmers are responsible for all this. But it is not wise to bury your head and pretend that the rest of the people in Ireland don’t make the connection between what you do and the impact it has on everyone else.

And of course, Ireland of 2023 being Ireland of 2023, it is entirely possible that some of the farmers making this case about the derogation know quite well it won’t be overturned. There might in their mind be the idea that all this pressure might somehow lead to measures in the upcoming budget to address this loss of income. If that is so, fine, but please do remember that the rest of the taxpayers who pay for all of this are not asleep. They can see that play a mile off.

Would it not be a better tactic for the farmers to make that request openly? Their case then would be: We farm the land. If we farm it to maximum efficiency and use certain methods, we know now that it damages the environment and the water. We are willing to amend those practices but if we do, we will lose a lot of income, and money we invested in good faith – so if we can change the funding model for this industry, nationally and EU-wide, we can do more to mind the environment.

That argument and approach are already used widely in farming – as many in the West know well. But there was little evidence of its use on this one. Now, that argument with respect to nitrate use and compensation arising has points on both sides – and plenty of rows about what the level of support should be. But at least we will know what we are talking about, and the farmers will – I think – find that many environmentalists will strongly support their request for greater public subsidy.

To change to that argument would be hard for some farmers. But, like spreading slurry on the land in such quantities, continuing with the current line of argument is just not sustainable.