The Department of Agriculture’s advisory group on nitrates policy is to recommend a raft of changes to Ireland’s Nitrates Action Programme (NAP) which it wants to come into effect both from 2024 and beyond, the Irish Farmers Journal can reveal.

These changes, advised by the Nitrates Expert Group, will seek to tighten up on map acres and clampdown on false slurry exports in a bid to improve water quality.

Proposals include making slurry export declarations before tanks leave yards, reducing the protein levels of concentrate feeds and introducing a national feed database in 2025.

The group consists of officials from the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Housing, as well as representatives from Teagasc and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Slurry exports could have to be declared in advance of slurry leaving yards from 2024 if the Department of Agriculture implements a measure agreed upon by the group.

All members of the expert group agreed in July that farmers should declare slurry movements before they are exported to allow for the Department and local authorities to inspect exports in real time.

However, by the next group meeting in August, this proposal was loosened to declaring the export “on the day or the day after movement”.

GPS

The change is intended to give local authorities and the Department real-time information to inform on-the-ground inspections. The Department is also to consider if using GPS trackers on tractors exporting slurry could be used from 2025 on, with officials to engage with their counterparts in the Netherlands where the measure is already in place.

Another measure under consideration for 2026 is the introduction of a new regulation requiring drains feeding into drinking water abstraction points to be fenced, although no distance is mentioned from an abstraction from which farmers would have to take action.

Further clarity is to be brought to the definition of which drains must be fenced on derogation farms and this may include those which are dry up to nine months of the year. A stakeholder consultation is expected to open before the end of 2023 for the interim review of the NAP and the expert group’s recommendations could be brought into play through this review.