The proposed Nitrates Action Programme in principle limits farm stocking rates to 170kg of organic nitrogen per hectare, legalises the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus a farmer can spread, defines slurry spreading periods, and sets minimum slurry storage requirements for farms.

Similar to other EU countries, Ireland has availed of a separate nitrates derogation which allows farmers hold stocking rates up to 250kg of organic N/ha.

This plan is silent on that derogation detail.

The big-ticket items in the proposals released this week reduce artificial N limits by between 10% and 15%. It’s probably not a game changer for the industry, but for individual farmers this could be significant.

This will be a hugely significant cost for some dairy farms, especially those milking in winter

Depending on the year, it has the potential to reduce feed grown.

The proposed plan increases the required slurry storage by one month across the board, and much more depending on how individual farmers currently store soiled water, which, essentially will be classified as slurry from now on. This will be a hugely significant cost for some dairy farms, especially those milking in winter.

This is a very significant move and again farmers with high-volume cows on smaller land blocks are going to lose out more than others

Introducing organic N banding for cows and on paper increasing the organic N (slurry) produced by a cow effectively limits stocking rate and will mean reductions in milking cows or replacements on dairy farms.

This is a very significant move and again farmers with high-volume cows on smaller land blocks are going to lose out more than others. Covering open tanks is the other big one.

All in, there is significant extra cost and much tightened stocking rate limits for some dairy farmers in these proposals.