Detailed notes:
Oliver Bowers of Haskoning (who presented at the recent WCP meeting) gave an update on the Catchment Management Plan (a part of which will be the Nutrient Management Plan). The intention is to develop a “10-year” plan. They seem to be getting their heads around things and are appreciative of all of the evidence supplied. The plan will be structured broadly around the 10 operational catchment areas, but some of these will need to be broken down to waterbody level. The NMP part will be primarily SAC target focussed, but will take account of wider, national targets as necessary. It will consider not just P, but ammonia and nitrate. Oliver said they are still planning to release the CMP this autumn.
University of the West of England (UWE) have secured the £1M cross-border funding. The project lead, Dr Rounaq Nayak, attended in person. They will be working with three specific farms to co-develop working solutions. “Living labs” is the catch phrase. Project scoping and planning is underway; completion will be 2029. I’m not holding my breath for much of use coming out of this. But two ministers have been seen to be doing something to help, so I suppose it’s already a success in terms of political posturing.
Voice of the river, Louise Bodnar thought similarly and pointed out that many of the measures required to fix the river (reduced livestock density, rewilding) are never going to be palatable to farmers, so they are unlikely to be ‘co-developed’ on farms.
Dan Smith of Herefordshire Rural Hub (HRH) presented on their farmgate nutrient balance project. In 2 years , they have engaged with 140 holdings, representing 20% of the Herefordshire Wye catchment. Overall result is that these farms are now in significant P drawdown. Moreover, it’s helping their bottom line, so not a difficult sell. They are engaging with the supply chain to improve feedstock, etc. Tesco have been supportive in this too. HRH farmgate nutrient analysis has, however, exposed a massive N surplus on the majority of farms. Which helps explain what we see in the rivers.
HRH have also been investigating legacy P (supported by Lancaster Uni). They have measured Olsen P (OP) and Total P (TP) across 16 farms (of various types). OP is found to be a poor indicator of TP and typically represents around 4% of it. The big question is how to access the TP, most of which is not directly plant-available.
Louise again: aren’t TP release mechanisms understood? Healthy soil, incorporating fungal communities, etc.? … Yes, they are, but not how to implement on real-world farms, including those which are already regenerative.
Herefordshire CC (in collaboration with Lancaster Uni) reported some interesting lab-scale work on adding gypsum (hydrated CaSO4) to reduce water extractible P (WEP). WEP is part of OP, but by no means all of it. Importantly, WEP is the fraction which gets washed into the river. Much of Herefordshire soil has high Mg, which increases the WEP fraction. Gypsum counteracts this, significantly reducing WEP fraction without impacting OP (the plant available stuff). They plan to start full-scale field trials this autumn.
In response to past criticism from NMB, the SOG have been reviewing their operation and will bring proposals to next meeting.
A charter for the river Wye has been agreed across all Wye catchment councils and will be formally launched at Hay on Wye on 24th May. To which we are all invited.
EA West Midlands have a new ‘enforcement lead’ in post. Interesting … the implication hopefully being a more robust approach to regulation.
