Farming does more to pollute rivers than any other sector. Madeleine Cuff discovers how it can begin to clean up its act
THE rolling English farmland of Dorset, Somerset and Devon might look like a bucolic idyll, but looks can be deceptive. These three counties in the country’s south-west are home to hundreds of intensive dairy farms, producing almost a quarter of the UK’s milk. Thousands of cows create a smelly problem for farmers: what to do with all the dung? As I drive along the winding country lanes, the stench drifting off nearby fields offers a clue.
My nostrils aside, it is local rivers that bear the brunt. In wet weather, slurry (manure plus water) overflows from silos where it is stored and runs off land into waterways, wreaking havoc on their ecology. The situation is particularly bad in the south-west, but this is a nationwide problem – and it isn’t the only damage that agriculture does to rivers. Over recent decades, pressure from supermarkets to provide plentiful food at low prices has pushed farmers to boost livestock numbers, use more fertilisers and pesticides to increase crop yields and remove hedgerows to make larger, more efficient fields. All these actions have knock-on effects, polluting watercourses with soil sludge, toxic chemicals and excess nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus.
As in other countries, the UK has legislation to reduce the ecological damage caused by farming. But enforcing these rules isn’t always easy, even when environment agencies make them a priority. No wonder the UK’s rivers are in such a bad state. It sounds like the perfect storm, but, in my travels around the country, I have found green shoots of hope that we can build on to clean up waterways and revitalise the wildlife they support.
This problem isn’t unique to the UK. Across Europe, 22 per cent of rivers are significantly affected by agricultural runoff. Things are even worse in the US, where around 46 per cent of rivers and streams suffer from excess nutrients and just 28 per cent are assessed as “healthy”. Agriculture, which accounts for about 50 per cent of land use in the US, is the leading source of pollution in its rivers and lakes. Even in New Zealand, a country renowned for its pristine natural environment, a recent government report concluded that 45 per cent of the total length of its rivers is too polluted to swim in. It pointed the finger at dairy farming, which has seen cow numbers increase by 80 per cent in the past three decades.
In the UK, about 70 per cent of the entire country is designated as agricultural land. Around one-third of that is cropland, mainly for cereals such as wheat and barley, with most of the rest used for raising livestock. In many ways, farming practices are well suited to the coun
