Answer lies in the soil

Date: 29/05/1997

By Tim Jones

EUROPE'S fertiliser, pesticide and herbicide manufacturers know only too well that the writing is on the wall.

In fact, it is so clear that these huge chemicals companies - including household names such as Norsk Hydro, Kemira Agro, BASF, DSM, ICI and Grande Paroisse - are learning to live with the changes which are already coming with the onset of a 'greener' consciousness among people and policy-makers.

Even that former bastion of production for its own sake, the Common Agricultural Policy, is slowly being brought into line.

Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler is starting to talk openly about 'greening' the CAP; a concept that would have been alien to any of the founders of the policy in the Fifties.

The idea is already being floated that future support payments to farmers should be linked to carrying out environmental duties; a process known as 'cross-compliance' or 'eco-compatibility'.

Under last year's reform of the support regime for the fruit and vegetables sector, growers have to fulfil environmental obligations to qualify for membership of the producer groups which control cash pay-outs.

Radical voices have called for financial incentives for farmers who move out of arable production and into grasslands, reduce their livestock numbers, adapt crop varieties and cut back their input of fertilisers and pesticides.

Fertiliser-makers are also anticipating a major change. In its annual forecast, the European Fertiliser Manufacturers' Association (EFMA) foresaw a 4&percent; shrinkage in consumption of fertilisers - mostly nitrogens, phosphates and potash - over the coming decade. “Farmers are using manures better and substituting them for manufactured fertilisers,” admits Nick Douthwaite, an environmental policy expert at the EFMA.

The association, nevertheless, remains confident that its products, which are refined natural components produced in quantity, will continue to be used in large amounts into the next century.

This is largely because organic farming is not hazard-free. Take the case of simple manure. While ammonia is volatile and can disappear into the air, nitrate is a salt in the soil which can wash quickly through the ground and pollute the water course when it rains or the land is irrigated.

Some member states are taking a strict approach to the use of produced fertilisers.

In Germany, computer help is provided for fertiliser management and farmers are obliged to file a return every year showing the quantity of natural nutrients they have used and how much they have had to top up with industrial fertilisers.

In Denmark, farmers can be fined for having an excessive surplus to be filled with manufactured products.