Farmers sow under new fertiliser law without key rules

Farmers are preparing to sow their fields but still do not know how the new fertiliser law will affect them, DR reports. The uncertainty has prompted agricultural associations that advise farmers to receive a large number of calls from worried clients.

“This is a situation I have never experienced before, even though I have been in the industry for 42 years. We do not know the rules 100 per cent,” said Poul Rokkjær Madsen, a team leader and crop production adviser at the agricultural association Agillix.

The law changes how agricultural nitrogen emissions are regulated. Greater emphasis will be placed on the location of fields and the aquatic environment into which the nitrogen flows. Farms will also receive a quota for how much nitrogen their production may emit, based on how much nitrogen the local aquatic environment can tolerate.

However, farmers do not yet know what their individual emission quotas will be. That is creating difficulties because the time to sow the fields has arrived.

Among those affected is Kjeld Villadsen, who runs a farm five kilometres from Nibe and has already sown his winter rapeseed.

“The law could mean that my winter rapeseed may have to be replaced with spring barley and cover crops next spring, when I hopefully know my quota,” he said.

Some farms could be hit hard

The lack of information means advisers cannot help their clients as they normally would, Madsen said. Farmers are asking advisers to calculate how the rules will affect their farms, but the results may still have to be changed.

Lars Iversen, chairman of the agricultural association L&F Centrovice on Funen, is in the same position. He also runs a farm himself.

“The new regulation is very individual for each farm, so some farms will be hit hard by it,” he said.

Iversen said farmers accepted that nitrogen emissions had to be regulated, but needed to know which rules they were expected to follow.

Brian H. Jacobsen, a lecturer in agricultural economics at the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Food and Resource Economics, said farmers were facing a very difficult situation. Some could make decisions that turned out to be wrong, potentially causing emissions to exceed their quotas in the first year.

He said the costs could be significant because farmers were being forced to make decisions without a full overview of the consequences.

Expert suggests transition year

Landbrug & Fødevarer, an organisation representing agriculture and food production, has also received many enquiries from farmers who are frustrated and uncertain about the new rules, said farmer and deputy chairman Martin Hjort Jensen.

He said farmers would probably receive information about how the law would affect individual farms at the end of September.

“It may be that I sow some fields now because I do not know any better, even though they could actually have been managed differently,” Jensen said.

Jacobsen suggested introducing a transition year with a softer implementation, allowing farmers, advisers and authorities to become familiar with the new system. One option, he said, could be to require farms to meet 80 per cent of the requirements in the first year.

DR asked the Agency for Green Land Transition and Water Environment when guidance for farmers would be published. The agency had not responded by the article’s deadline.