Nitrate Vulnerable Zones

I am grateful to my hon. Friend; I hope that the Minister will take note of his intervention. The increased costs on those within the zone, to which I shall come shortly, put them at a considerable competitive disadvantage compared with those engaged in similar enterprises in neighbouring areas outside the zone. The proposal's second impact concerns when nitrogen applications can take place. DEFRA plans to ban spreading slurry and poultry manure for up to five months during autumn and winter. It will extend the current ban of two to three months, which applies only to that 10 to 20 per cent. of NVZ land with sandy and shallow soil, to a ban for all land within the NVZ of between three and five months, depending on average rainfall, soil type and whether the slurry is being applied to arable or grassland. That is likely to have the perverse effect, even according to DEFRA's own figures, of increasing the ammonia emissions from manure spreading by up to 9 per cent. Ammonia is a potent pollutant that other EU directives are targeted to reduce. It is a further irony of the proposal that, according to the NFU, the environmental damage caused by the extra emissions will cost up to £300 million. The proposal will encourage farmers to empty their slurry stores on the first fine day after the winter spreading bans end, almost certainly in unison. That has been the experience in other countries with similar regulations, such as the Netherlands, where regulations apply to pig and dairy cattle slurry. Instead of spreading slurry little and often when soil and weather conditions align to make it suitable, farmers throughout the area will all rush to empty their stores at the same time, increasing the environmental risks of smell in dry weather and leachate in wet. Thirdly, the proposals on how manure should be spread amount to a ban on high-trajectory, high-pressure slurry spreaders. That would slow down the process, increase the cost and require additional investment in further machinery. Fourthly, the proposals prescribe limits on how much nitrogen can be applied to each type of crop, which will effectively limit the potential yield from any specific crop. Over the years, plant breeders have developed higher-yielding varieties of all types of crops. The measure flies in the face of the attempt to encourage a competitive, dynamic agricultural sector. Perhaps it is an example of the Prime Minister's vision—from his bunker, he commands a new five-year plan for agriculture. The command economy will be alive and well on English farms. Farmers can work within a farm-wide limit, so they should be free to apply fertiliser within that limit as they see fit to maximise crop potential. DEFRA recently conceded that it is willing to seek a grassland derogation from the general whole-farm limit of 170 kg of nitrogen per hectare. The derogation is essential, and I urge the Minister to confirm today whether he is seeking a grassland derogation of 250 kg per hectare, as is granted to other member states. The proposal's fifth and single biggest impact for farmers in affected sectors relates to the control of how slurry is stored. DEFRA proposes a minimum of six months' storage for poultry and pig manure and five months for cattle slurry within two years of the regulations' coming into force. That would impose a massive cost increase on hard-pressed dairy, pig and poultry farmers, many of whom would need to more than double their storage capacity, at a time when two dairy farmers a week have been leaving the industry due to the inability to make a living, poultry farmers have faced two avian flu scares in successive years and sharply volatile prices and livestock farmers, especially pig and poultry farmers, face a near-doubling of feed costs following last year's grain price rises. The capital cost of constructing suitable storage pits is estimated to be between £240 million and £400 million. DEFRA's estimate seems completely out of touch with the reality of farming in Britain today. DEFRA assumes that farmers will have no difficulty in borrowing the capital cost and repaying it over 25 years, but banks—particularly in their current nervous and fragile state—might take a more jaundiced view about lending money to finance a sunk capital spend with no prospect of any return on investment. According to Promar International for Dairy UK, the capital cost for the average dairy farm will be £55,000. For the average pig farm, it will be £30,000, according to the British Pig Executive. For tenant farmers, such a commitment is likely to be particularly hard to fund. In an economic environment where dairy and pig farming has recently become a marginal activity for many, a bank prepared to lend might not take a 25-year view on repayment. Ten years seems more realistic, which would double DEFRA's estimate of the annual cost of investment.