Former environment secretary George Eustice has called for increased water management grants for farmers to tackle water pollution caused by agriculture.
Eustice, who led the Department for environment, food and rural affairs until 2022, said financial incentives for farmers are essential to motivate participation in schemes to improve the agricultural sector.
It is one of a series of recommendations in a report by thinktank Onward that has been supported by Eustice.
Writing in the Greener Pastures report’s foreword, Eustice says: “If we want land managers to deliver ecosystem services, we should treat it as a market and not begrudge them a margin.”
He adds: “Although the government decided to abandon the income foregone methodology several years ago, there will doubtlessly be corners of Whitehall that would want a reversion to the past approach. That would fail farmers and the environment and must be resisted by every political party as we enter an election year.”
The report calls for Defra to give more money for water management on farms, among other practices to limit the impact from agriculture on waterways.
The report recognises the contribution that farming methods make to water pollution. The overuse of synthetic fertilisers and inadequate storage and processing infrastructure for manure result in nutrients seeping into rivers and lakes, Onward states in the report. This can lead to algal blooms on the surface of rivers, which suffocate the fish below.
Agriculture and rural land management is responsible for around 40% of water body pollution in England according to data from the Environment Agency.
The impact from wastewater treatment and storm overflows has been highly publicised in recent years, but less attention has been given to agriculture, urban diffuse pollution and runoff from highways. Each contribute significantly to reasons for rivers not achieving good ecological status.
Investment in infrastructure and technologies that could protect the water environment has been too low, the report indicates. It adds that incentives through government’s Farming Investment Fund and Farming Innovation Programme are failing to deal with the environmental problems caused by current practices.
Onward said installing more infrastructure would be required to improve productivity, tackle water pollution and enhance resilience to climate change. Planning barriers to agricultural infrastructure was also highlighted as an area for overhaul to ensure land managers and users can make updates without red tape.
Other measures to improve water body quality proposed include an extension of the slurry infrastructure grant funding after the upcoming rounds and the creation of a similar scheme for managing poultry manure.
Onward also recommends on-farm reservoirs to hold back rainwater that can be used for irrigation to balance times of low or high rainfall that are becoming more common with the changing climate. Last year, many farms were susceptible to drought during the long dry summer, which the report said indicated a need for more storage.