Take water issue seriously, says NFU

Continued access to abstracted water remains vital for boosting food production while minimising the impact to the environment, the NFU said today following the publication of its water survey results for 2011, which show just how important water is to all farm businesses.

Hundreds of farmers and growers throughout the UK have explained how they are using water resources responsibly, what steps they are taking to conserve water and how they will tackle challenges in the future. This includes using run off from greenhouse roofs, increasing capacity of reservoirs and plans to improve water efficiency in coming years.

East Midlands’ NFU regional environment adviser, Paul Tame said: ’This year has been the driest on record, proving to be a challenging one for our farmers and growers.

’Farmers are making great efforts to conserve and use water more wisely, despite the fact that only one per cent of the total amount of water abstracted is used by the agricultural sector in England and Wales. For some farmers, water availability could become a crucial issue in future, especially if climate change continues to affect weather and rainfall patterns.

’The results of the NFU survey make fascinating reading and they serve as a timely reminder that everyone must take the issue of water seriously.’

The NFU continues to promote water efficiency among its members and, in addition, would like to see:

1. Support by Government and its agencies for the use of voluntary abstraction restrictions and abstraction management in catchments and times of low water availability as an option enforced by farmer abstractor groups themselves;

2. A transparent, consistent but flexible delivery approach by the Environment Agency in relation to the regulation of abstraction licences;

3. A restoration of the threshold for the ’large’ category of reservoir to be defined as 25,000m3 to encourage the building of more on-farm storage reservoirs;

4. More research and development into drought tolerant plant varieties and on-farm demonstrations of new, more efficient irrigation technologies;

5. Investment incentives, such as appropriate exemptions, tax incentives and grants to encourage the use of water efficient irrigation technology such as drip and computerised irrigation systems etc;

6. Water companies have, and abide by, a Code of Practice, when drawing up drought orders.

The NFU’s water survey is carried out every five years (quinquennial).