Slurry spreading dispensation - beware

I can't speak from scientific exploration, but I can speak from my own experience.
I live quite close to a major river, and most of the towns and villages in the county and the surrounding counties are either on this river or on smaller rivers that are tributaries of this river. In the past 20 years, every small town and village has seen the end of the septic tank system and the development of sewerage treatment systems - all of which feed treated waste into our waterways. You could call me lucky, but I have managed to work on the construction of some of these systems locally and I have seen how they work and how they are supposed to work.
To put it very simply, these systems consist of a number of filters which remove the solid particles in the sewerage which is then landfilled while the liquid part is discharged into the rivers. There is no process in place to remove the Nutrients from the liquid that is discharged into the waterways.

Second to that, all of these treatment plants are built in close proximity to rivers. One system, that I was involved in the construction of and I know someone who is responsible for maintaining, has flooded every year since its construction. This flooding has seen all of the solid materials in the system at that time being taken out into a major river. We don't hear any reports of this and we don't see any figures in water analysis reports which details this.

My local town of 1000 still doesnt even have a treatment plant, luckily its beside a river that flows into the sea in about a mile. I assume all testing is carried out up river from this town.

There should be a mandatory ruling that all abstraction of waters for industry and towns should have to take place down stream from where they are discharging what ever treated water they have. Its would clean up our waterways at the stroke of a pen and cost little.
 
@Sheebadog
Is it a trade secret or can you give us any more information about how you use legumes to reduce your N requirement?

Clovers, lucerne, peas, beans etc. along with chicken/turkey litter and oodles of fym keep the land in good fettle.
I'm also not allowed any p&k, but we don't need it.
Yes we have a huge saving on fert but it also comes with a price...spreading fym and sowing cc's doesn't come cheap or easy. Hard to beat the ease of firing out your fert with a spinner!

@TMKF.
I wasn't actually picking your post it's just sometimes it's easier to reply to a post than create a new one.

@Ozzy Scott. I largely agree with your posts re nitrates. The gov/local gov have much to hide regards water quality and therefore I'd take any analysis of water quality with a pinch of salt.

I was at an open day about nitrates two years ago. There was an experiment with two grass paddocks in the same field. Land was bone dry and 35uN was spread on the paddocks. Both paddocks then got 25mm of water. 14 days later one paddock got another 40mm of water...
Result was the paddock that got the extra 40mm was yellow and the other was deep green and actively growing.
Where did the N go? River??
This was done in a dry country with nowhere near as much rain as Ireland.

I've replicated this here and the same result.

For the dairy farmers that spread a bag of urea in Jan (my full yearly allowance) where does it go? Does it stay in the soil?
If dairy farmers were allowed 49uN would they spread it all in Jan?
 
If you don't spread nitrogen though you get no production. Sure we'd be aswell off organic as having 49u/ac. Does this not have a lot to do with what you are growing too. Surely grass nitrogen uptake would be higher than most arable crops and as such you would both need and be able to use more without it leeching.
 
If you don't spread nitrogen though you get no production. Sure we'd be aswell off organic as having 49u/ac. Does this not have a lot to do with what you are growing too. Surely grass nitrogen uptake would be higher than most arable crops and as such you would both need and be able to use more without it leeching.

Yes you will get production, nitrogen is all about timing and often just a few units is all thats needed to stimulate the grass to get growing. I hope within 5 years to be using maybe only around 20 units while maintaining production very close to current levels that are been achieved with around 125 units of N per acre. We gotta start using our heads farming as at the moment we are taking the easy option available of either the chemical can or the fertiliser bag. there allot more to making plants grow than chemical fertilisers
 
Anyone on here ever use Sobac? Seems you don't need p and k or lime, can cut your use of n buy 30%. I reckon half as good as sales man says it would be great stuff. Thinking strong about trying some.
 
Anyone on here ever use Sobac? Seems you don't need p and k or lime, can cut your use of n buy 30%. I reckon half as good as sales man says it would be great stuff. Thinking strong about trying some.
Looked at there webpage to see what it was and the most important line is half way down. HUMUS IS THE KEY, I really dont think any of these fancy products are needed
 
If you don't spread nitrogen though you get no production. Sure we'd be aswell off organic as having 49u/ac. Does this not have a lot to do with what you are growing too. Surely grass nitrogen uptake would be higher than most arable crops and as such you would both need and be able to use more without it leeching.

I'd go organic in a heartbeat if I didn't have a tillage operation. Livestock farmed organically is a joke really...all antibiotics, wormers etc are allowed only the withdrawal periods are doubled.
Tillage without herbicides, insecticides and fungicides would be a completely different scenario. I've no bother growing 20-23tDm/ha maize without any artificial fert or herbicides. Likewise lucerne.

Surely 22tdm/ha of maize has a greater need for N than grass at say 16tdm/ha?

I'm not saying that everyone should be using 49uN, I'm just saying that there's the possibility that Brussels would impose those, or similar, restrictions...that's all.
 
I'd go organic in a heartbeat if I didn't have a tillage operation. Livestock farmed organically is a joke really...all antibiotics, wormers etc are allowed only the withdrawal periods are doubled.
Tillage without herbicides, insecticides and fungicides would be a completely different scenario. I've no bother growing 20-23tDm/ha maize without any artificial fert or herbicides. Likewise lucerne.

Surely 22tdm/ha of maize has a greater need for N than grass at say 16tdm/ha?

I'm not saying that everyone should be using 49uN, I'm just saying that there's the possibility that Brussels would impose those, or similar, restrictions...that's all.
Is it poultry manure you use to grow all those tonnes of maize, they are phenomenal yields without any bagged/liquid fert
 
Is it poultry manure you use to grow all those tonnes of maize, they are phenomenal yields without any bagged/liquid fert

Pretty much a mix of chicken, turkey and livestock fym. Between 40 and 80 t/ha are applied and maize is always preceded by a legume. Legume can be one or two years in the ground before maize. One year is enough because the wheat crop after maize can be hard to keep standing after two years of legume preceding the maize iykwim(?).

Edit. Maize yields are not rocket science...55% of yield is the grain. If fertility is right all you need is 'head in the sun and toes in the water'...French saying.
 
Last edited:
I wonder if you overlaid a rainfall chart on that map what would it look like. Im very sceptical of that map linking that seems to show that Ag is the only cause of N in water.
I'd actually expect the reverse. The NW definitely gets more rain than the SE yet the pollution levels are reversed

Also thats not really what this is. The agricultural intensity is just an overlay. You could create one using the population density and nitrates pollution as easy. This one was from a section mostly concerned with ag though
 
Pretty much a mix of chicken, turkey and livestock fym. Between 40 and 80 t/ha are applied and maize is always preceded by a legume. Legume can be one or two years in the ground before maize. One year is enough because the wheat crop after maize can be hard to keep standing after two years of legume preceding the maize iykwim(?).

Edit. Maize yields are not rocket science...55% of yield is the grain. If fertility is right all you need is 'head in the sun and toes in the water'...French saying.
Wow wow, wait a minute.

Whats the breakdown of the ratio of turkey/chicken manure to livestock farmyard manure?
 
The story about the soup stone springs to mind.
We all do need to make more use of organic manures and reduce our use of chemical ferts. Tillage farms especially are going to have stop always drawing nutrients and organic matter out the gate and never bringing any in.
 
Was just about to ask what controls there are on organic nitrogen applications.

Also the 49units is that average across the holding or that no one acre receives more than 49units?
 
The story about the soup stone springs to mind.
We all do need to make more use of organic manures and reduce our use of chemical ferts. Tillage farms especially are going to have stop always drawing nutrients and organic matter out the gate and never bringing any in.
The conacre system doesn't help...
 
Was just about to ask what controls there are on organic nitrogen applications.

Also the 49units is that average across the holding or that no one acre receives more than 49units?
Average across all acres. I can spread it pretty much any way I want (within reason).
 
What about organic nitrogen? is that included in the 49 units too?

Thanks for the insights into how things work elsewhere, fascinating
The 49uN are calculated by the amount of organic N spread and also a function of soil tests...and local water quality.
 
is the organic N limit similar to here at 170kgs/ha, no derogation available??

Applying 40-80t/ha of turkey/chicken/FYM is a phenomenal amount of nutrients for any crop, composted I assume before application.
No limit to organic N, but the more that's available/spread the less artificial N allowed. I'm coming close to some sort of limit though because I've got a letter saying that I may not be able to take any more sewage sludge from the town treatment plant...

Yes composted. A machine comes and turns the heaps when he's in the area. You've probably seen those machines in straw composters for mushrooms.
 
No limit to organic N, but the more that's available/spread the less artificial N allowed. I'm coming close to some sort of limit though because I've got a letter saying that I may not be able to take any more sewage sludge from the town treatment plant...

Yes composted. A machine comes and turns the heaps when he's in the area. You've probably seen those machines in straw composters for mushrooms.
Theres no limit to Organic N!

Christ, doesnt sound like yous have it too bad.
 
Theres no limit to Organic N!

Christ, doesnt sound like yous have it too bad.

But there is a limit to France's Organic N, didnt @Sheebadog mention about yearly mineral N, soil tests? Sounds allot better than the Irish system where my neighbor stocked at a half livestock unit per HA can apply 170kgs of Organic and me on 4 livestock units per Ha is governed by the same 170kgs of Organic N limit without a derogation.
 
Back
Top