Martin Lines and Tom Bradshaw.

Q43 The Chair: We are now starting our second panel of the day, where we will be hearing from the National Farmers’ Union and the Nature Friendly Farming Network. Thank you so much for being with us today, your presence is very much appreciated. May I ask you to please introduce yourselves, starting with Martin Lines?

Martin Lines: Good morning and thank you for the opportunity. I farm in Cambridgeshire, predominantly arable, and I am the chief executive of the Nature Friendly Farming Network, which is a UK farmer membership organisation.

Tom Bradshaw: I am president of the National Farmers’ Union, representing 45,000 members across England and Wales, and I farm in Essex.

The Chair: Thank you. Other than reminding members and witnesses that they should declare any relevant interests the first time they speak, I will move on swiftly to our first question from Lord Ashcombe.

Lord Ashcombe: Do you have a sense of how widespread nitrogen management practices are across England and Wales, and maybe the whole of the UK, if you can? Is there an economic case for farms to implement these measures, and do they?

Martin Lines: I will start. Currently 57% of farmers have a nutrient management plan, which is a similar level to 2011. So even in England, where there are incentives to do them within the SFI, we have not seen a step change. Some 68% are updated annually and 90% refer to them on an annual basis; so many have them but are not actually using them. Some 74% of farms test the soil for nutrients and 65% use a whole farm nutrient management balance plan, but much of the focus is on phosphorus and potash, not the nitrogen side. There is a willingness to do that, and there can be significant savings. We found on our own farm, as have many of our members, that focusing on good management plans and understanding the data of what is in your soil, what is in your tissues and your analysis can reduce nitrogen use, which could give significant savings; £397 million a year is lost to nitrogen inefficiencies resulting from the use of artificial fertilisers. There are significant savings available to the industry, but they need to adapt and use these newer methods of identifying nutrient use, rather than just a standardised RB209 application rate.

Tom Bradshaw: I would agree with the figure of 57% having nutrient management plans in 2024, but we have to reflect that nitrogen fertiliser use has fallen by 50% since 1990; the nitrogen fertiliser balance has also reduced by over a third since 1990—or improved by over a third. When we look at the price of fertiliser, it is the most expensive input any farm will use so using it judiciously is very important. But we must be careful not to victimise nitrogen fertiliser and we have to remember that probably half the people on this planet are alive because of nitrogen fertiliser. We want to use it efficiently and effectively, and we need to from an environmental and economic perspective, but we also have to recognise the critical role it plays in providing the food that this country and the world need. If we reduce our outputs here and continue importing food that does not have the same restrictions, we are just going to make ourselves less productive and less able to compete.

Lord Ashcombe: Mr Lines, you mentioned that there is a lot of work being done on phosphorus and potassium, but not nitrogen.

Martin Lines: A lot of people focus on those as core trace elements and do five-yearly testing, but for nitrogen you need to do an annual testing in soil in the early spring and then follow it up with tissue and sap analysis to get the balance of what the crop needs. What many are finding is that there are trace element shortages in crops that are making it difficult to make that nitrogen balance work efficiently. It is about using the latest sap analysis and satellite imagery. There are tools available, but they usually come at a cost and you have to be really reactive to what you are seeing and what is going on.

I just want to pick up on the issue of feeding the nation and food security. A lot of what we are using nitrogen for is not actually producing the food we consume. We really need to think about the priority of using nitrogen and the effect that has. Are we using nitrogen to feed energy plants or livestock systems? We cannot just keep using a product that has a significant cost to not only farmers but the environment. It is about how we get that balance right, and the priority use for these products.

The Chair: You mentioned micronutrients; where do the micronutrients that farmers need come from? Do they come from nature, without artificial fertilisers?

Martin Lines: Focusing on really healthy soil systems, using diverse rotations and cover crops and adding some manures if you possibly can, builds up those nutrients within the soils and within the system. Often you can buy in nutrients through seaweed extract sprays or trace element sprays. From our own experience, we found that when we did sap analysis and tissue analysis in the spring there was no nitrogen deficiency, even though we had not put any on. It was zinc, boron, manganese and some sulphur that was making the crop go yellow. By just applying some trace elements, the crop was able to sustain itself because there were enough nitrogen nutrients in the ground. It is making that available and doing that whole-soil analysis approach that unlocks the potential of the nutrients that can be built up within the soil.

The Chair: Is it easy enough for farmers to get that information?

Martin Lines: It is readily available, but there are not enough testing facilities in the UK. Many of us are sending tissue analyses to Europe to get the data we want. We could expand that opportunity to get the data to be quickly available for farmers.

The Chair: That is something we can put to the Government.

Lord Trees: In terms of incentivisation or implementation of these measures, and given the quite high percentages of farmers who are engaged in monitoring what they are doing, is there any attempt to aggregate that data in an anonymised way so that an individual farmer can compare how they are doing with what other people are doing? That can be a very powerful driver for change.

Tom Bradshaw: The likes of NRM—the laboratories that do a lot of the testing—can provide amalgamated anonymised data. You do not know where you are within that data, but you have your own results so you would be able to get some information from them.

Martin talks about the individual experience and there are many farms that have that individual experience, but it is also crucial that the likes of NIAB, AHDB and the scientific authorities back up individual farm trials with robust scientific evidence. It has to be able to be replicated, it has to be applicable across multiple farms and different farming systems. Soil health is absolutely central to this, I have no doubt about that, but understanding where we can go for that scientific evidence is really important so that the industry as a whole is able to adopt these changing practices knowing that they will lead to the right outcomes.

When I think about the impacts on my farm, the worst crops I grow are the ones that have the highest carbon footprint. If I take actions which end up reducing my outputs, then very often I end up with a higher net carbon per tonne of output than if I had achieved a higher yield. It is important to make sure we are not sacrificing yield. Often you cannot afford to do that when you are looking at it per tonne of output basis.

Lord Duncan of Springbank: Martin, picking up on the point you made earlier that a number of farms have plans but do not use them: they have made the leap to have the plan, so what is it that stops them continuing? Is it a cost issue? What would be the reason for not updating and continuing to use the plan?

Martin Lines: Many farmers I speak to go on what they did previously. If the RB209 says it is 220 to 240 kilograms, that is just what they are going to do. They have made a plan to think about it, but they carry on just doing what they did. What significantly changes that is having some additional data, something coming in. Sometimes their FACTS adviser will do the plan, but that may be the only conversation they have around it because they ordered the nitrogen back in the autumn and that is what they are going to use. It is tailoring the approach that really adjusts that use.

Lord Duncan of Springbank: Is there a cost to the tailoring of the plan as it goes forward, as they try to refine it for their own specific circumstances?

Martin Lines: The biggest change we saw was when fertiliser went up from £800 to £1,000 was most farmers made significant reductions because they were looking for cost saving. Yes, the current cost is expensive, but actually putting more on gives the impression that you are going to get a better outcome.

Q44 Lord Lennie: How effective are nature-based approaches to reducing nutrient pollution compared with technological ones?

Tom Bradshaw: Both have a role. For the NFU, this is not about either/or, it is about how we maximise the value of all interventions, whether that be nitrification inhibitors, which can reduce nitrogen loss through the soil, or buffer strips that can stop runoff into our watercourses. They all have a valuable role to play. Cover crops would be another one: capturing nitrogen that might otherwise have been leached away through the winter. There are multiple elements that have a role to play here, and it is about how we maximise the value of both rather than it being an either/or scenario.

Martin Lines: There are nature-based solutions around cover crops and hedgerows, agroforestry, buffer strips and those bits that stop excess nutrient leaving the soil. There is a lot of land that gets left bare over autumn and over winter before spring cropping that actually leaches the produce away. You can tie that up with some technological solutions around satellite imagery, soil tests and tissue analysis, building up from a nature-based approach of building deposits into your soil through cover crops and manures, if you can, and with a wide rotation, you can build up fertility. You can then use the data and the science to understand when that will be available within your crop. If your nitrogen is only at 60 centimetres to 90 centimetres and you are putting the spring crop in, it is then not readily available to the crops. You need to know where it is in the profile and how readily available it would be to the crop that is coming in. So we have to join up the nature-based approach and technological solutions.

The Chair: Just a quick supplementary: Defra has various programmes, such as ADOPT, and the farming equipment and technology fund, with various grants attached. How much enthusiasm is there among farmers to take up those grants?

Tom Bradshaw: There has been an oversubscription or overapplication, if you like, for those grant schemes so they were closed, but they have now been reopened and many who made applications will be hearing that these applications have been successful. There will be another round of the farming equipment and technology fund. If I were being challenging around them, they often support you for the purchase of machinery rather than the use and application of that machinery. I can buy a sensor for the top of my tractor which will scan my available nitrogen fertiliser, but other people might want to use a satellite approach. You can get funding for the equipment on my cab but you cannot get funding for the satellite approach. That seems a slightly strange scenario. There are the management plans but maybe through the SFI, the incentive should be £5 a hectare for variable-rate nitrogen regardless of how you use it. There is a variable nutrient part of the SFI, but whether we need both—

The Chair: Do you think the design of these programmes could be improved?

Tom Bradshaw: They could be slightly more practical so that they can genuinely be implemented and have the impact that they are designed to have.

Martin Lines: If we want a wide scope of people taking this up, paying some farmers for some capital costs—machinery, technology—is great, but it is not a widespread application. If you have supported all farmers in going down that route of contributing towards the application technology, all farmers can do it. So I might ask Tom to come and use his scanning device on mine because I am getting paid a reward to reduce, and I can pay a contract to somebody else to come and add the technology rather than me buying a device as well. We can really speed up the uptake of the use of technology because you do not have to make a big investment in capital items.

Q45 Lord Ashcombe: I suspect that farmers feel there are far too many regulations already, but what do you see as some challenges associated with meeting the current requirements of existing regulations such as the farming rules for water, and how could they be improved?

Tom Bradshaw: You are right about farming and regulation; there is plenty of it. There are also probably contradicting regulations between NVZs and the farming rules for water where they are not always completely compatible. If we think about the value of organic manures, whether they are organic manures that are coming out of animals or out of anaerobic digestion plants, there is real value in those manures and how we maximise the opportunity to spread them is really important. But the overwhelming frustration from farmers would be the use of cut-off dates within a calendar. This year we have seen NVZ windows introduced in Wales; these are nitrogen vulnerable zones where they have limited applications of organic manures to 170 kilograms a hectare of nitrogen. They definitely brought them in from this autumn. The fortnight after the NVZs were brought in was a lovely spell of dry weather, but the farmers were not able to spread the slurry. That may mean that on 15 January or whenever the window opens, you are then faced with this very real problem. Even though the weather might not be right, your stores are full, you still have to go by the calendar date, but you are creating a pollution risk because you are spreading in the wrong conditions.

The use of these calendar dates is incredibly challenging when maximising the value of the resources that we have on the farm. Organic manures are incredibly valuable products, and as an industry we need to make sure that we are not looking at them as part of our waste disposal plans and are maximising their value, but at the moment the regulations, particularly the farming rules for water, look at the crop need at that time in the calendar rather than the annual need or the rotational need of the crop. That becomes a real challenge to maximising the spreading window of those products.

Martin Lines: The regulatory limits, particularly around autumn spreading, have significant challenges for the increase in storage costs. Many people have increased their livestock units but not the storage facility behind that. If you are applying in the autumn, using the farming rules for water, and you put a cover crop in, the nutrient need for that cover crop is not recognised within the current framework. Many farmers are now, in a regenerative system, using cover crops to hold in carbon and improve soil quality, and that is a crop that wants feeding as well. We need to look at the whole of the soil life cycle and the cropping system, not just at what we are growing for food and energy but at what we are doing to improve soil health, locking in carbon and balancing up.

But if we also move away from some autumn applications, we could see a significant risk of spring overuse: everyone will store it up and, come the first weather window in spring, it all goes on and then you set a really terrible spring window. We currently have a system where it is really hard to put manures on top of growing crops because many of them will then add up to air quality issues, so it is about how we could pelletise them and have them in a spreadable format.

There is a significant annual cost to society of over £10 billion of nitrogen pollution when we get it wrong. The WWF report on nitrogen use, Nitrogen: Finding the Balance, contains some really good information and data.

So we need a really flexible approach to dates and soil conditions, making sure we are recording it and doing it in the right weather in the right place, doing the right thing with the best intent, and really having a better understanding of nitrogen balance and budgets so we can get the right amount of nutrients in the right place. We need to take a catchment approach to those applications, rather than putting too much in one place and then stopping the development of other things happening. As an industry, how are we going to take account of what our applications are? Some nutrients may need to be moved out of catchments to other places so that we get the balance right.

Earl Russell: Thank you both for your evidence. I have a very quick supplementary question. We are getting warmer and wetter winters. I have heard what you have said about calendarising, I have heard what you have said about the overuse of nitrogen in the spring. Do you think the use of nitrogen is getting more difficult as our climate is changing? Is that something we should look at?

Tom Bradshaw: Extreme deluges at any point after you have put on an organic manure or an artificial fertiliser are going to create a risk. That is probably where some technological approaches, inhibitors and things, can have a value in trying to mitigate some of that risk. In some respects that is why you need a wider spreading window; if you are forcing everybody to spread in the same period and you get the wrong weather at that time, there is a real risk of a massive pollution event, whereas the wider that spreading window is, the less opportunity there is for everybody to be wrong. At the moment, being overrestrictive potentially concertinas everything into such a short window that the risk is increased.

Martin Lines: The science also needs to back up why you need to apply it. Many people are applying manures when they already have high levels of P and K, so they might want the nitrogen. Are they using the right product or formulation of product in the right place to get the right balance? It is really important to get the applications right and focus on good soil health so that the flow of water through can be held in good soil structure rather than runoff.

Many people now, instead of putting on two applications, are spreading it to three or four because we do not know if it is going to be too wet or too dry, or whether we should come in really early. The volatility of climate is becoming extremely difficult for farmers. We are trying to eke out the best of those nutrients and planning what the future weather might be in the weeks ahead.

Tom Bradshaw: Could I just add to that? From a practical perspective, my biggest risk is that I have six or eight weeks of dry weather in the spring and then I just cannot get the fertiliser into the crop. So from a risk management perspective—we are doing it at the moment—we are putting quite a slug of nitrogen into our autumn-sown crops because that reduces the risk of failure.

The Chair: We need to speed up, colleagues. We need to be really quite sharp with questions and answers, please.

Lord Rooker: My supplementary is almost a supplementary to Earl Russell’s question. Listening to what you are saying, it seems the obvious question is: what is Defra’s reaction when it is clearly asked to widen the dates? I remember when I went to Defra in 1997, I received a briefing about all the key dates; the systems have changed since then but there were dates for this and dates for that. It was Defra’s purpose to avoid queues at the regional centres or coming at the wrong time. It was all done for Defra’s purposes, not for the farmers’ purposes. You clearly must ask Defra to widen these, to be more relevant to either climate change or weather changes, or simply because it is more economical. What is its reaction?

Tom Bradshaw: It is very difficult for it to regulate if it does not have strict dates, because farmers will find a reason to spread. It should really be decided on soil temperature and whether or not the crop is growing. Particularly if you are a grassland farmer in the south-west: your grass will be growing probably just about every day of the year, so not being able to feed that crop at a time when it is growing does not really make a lot of sense. But it does become very difficult to regulate and it is the regulatory side of this which drives the application window. If Defra says no from 1 November to 15 January, then anyone spreading at that time is wrong. It becomes much more complicated if Defra has a more flexible system. That is not to say it is wrong, but there probably needs to be more trust and you need to have more science underpinning the decision, so you need to have weather stations with soil data, including soil temperature data, to try to justify a different window.

Martin Lines: Defra has dates so it can have clear windows of when you should not be applying. If we put the trust in the farmer, there also needs to be a level of regulation, of enforcement, because unfortunately there are some farmers who do not do the right thing and push the limits of what they can do. It is about tackling the ones who are causing problems, not the others who are trying to take the sensible approach of, “If I have a good weather window, although the dates are slightly out, we could get an application on, and it will balance out what we can do”. It is about that fair balance between dealing with those who are causing problems, but for the rest of the farmers, allowing flexibility and having trust in them to do the right thing.

Lord Rooker: Sorry, I just want to understand what you are saying. Are the dates for Defra’s administrative convenience, or is the science controlling the dates?

Martin Lines: Both. The science says those crops should be dormant, they will not be needed, but as we are seeing our climate change and having warmer winters, crops are not as dormant as they used to be 10 years ago.

Tom Bradshaw: To your point on cover crops, Martin, and things like that, I do not think it is scientifically driven at the moment.

Q46 Earl of Leicester: Thank you for the very informative answers on that last question from Lord Ashcombe and all the various supplementaries. We have heard your views on regulation and the increasing importance of growing throughout the year, and that there are a number of farmers who are putting on smaller amounts of fertiliser more often, which is science-driven, and it is a shame that Defra is not necessarily recognising that. But I want to move on to the use of and indeed requirement for farm level nutrient budgets. Is that too ambitious? A number of farms are using them.

Martin Lines: I would say no, I do not think it is too ambitious but farmers would need to understand why and how they can make the balance work. There are lots of nutrients about and we have to get the right nutrients in the right place. Many of the organic manures are over in the west and we may want them in the east. How can we put them in a transportable product that we can spread when needed and do the applications and store them for when we need them? We have housing developments and everyone else having constrictions around catchment sensitive loading. Farmers need to be part of that and they might even see some actual benefits in managing their approach. It might mean that, instead of doing a crop that needs high levels of nutrients of winter wheat, they go down to a spring barley or spring wheat. We may be able to chop and change our rotation to get some value of that catchment load back towards the farm.

Tom Bradshaw: We are in real danger of massively overcomplicating this. There are some farms that produce too much organic manure and they have to export it, so there is already a limit to the amount that can be applied within a farming business. If you are overapplying it and breaking the rules, clearly you have a responsibility as a farming business to do the right thing and export that manure to other places. But you can also sample the crops and sample the grain that is produced for nitrogen balances, so you know whether you have overfertilised or underfertilised it. Provided you have the science and the evidence as to why you are taking the decisions you are taking, having a very restrictive approach could well be wrong because when you get to a catchment level, who is the one that does the balancing there? Every individual farm has a responsibility.

There are financial, environmental and many other reasons to be doing the right thing, but if you are producing too much organic manure for your farm business, you already have a responsibility to export it. What we are seeing in the River Wye catchment is that some poultry companies are taking more control because they want to continue to have the permission to produce poultry there, so they are now taking responsibility for exporting those nutrients out of the catchment.

The Chair: It can be done, but is it cost effective?

Tom Bradshaw: It is cost effective because, if not, they will not be able to produce the poultry.

The Chair: Thank you very much. That is very interesting. Please would you write to the committee with more details and examples of how that is being done currently?

Lord Duncan of Springbank: Obviously, indigenous manure is a resource, but if you are reliant on the import of fertilisers—we have seen price peaks in the past—in an ever more turbulent world right now in terms of trade and conflict, what preparations are you making to mitigate against what would potentially be a further series of significant challenges for farmers to secure the fertiliser they need?

Tom Bradshaw: It feels like under the last Government we lost our capability to manufacture, so we are now completely reliant on importing liquid ammonia even for the fertiliser we are making. From a resilience perspective, there is a question of whether we are becoming overreliant on other global partners. Green ammonia is quite an exciting innovation for the future, where fertilisers are made from renewable energy sources, and that deserves further exploration. It is a scientific approach and can definitely reduce the energy consumption of producing artificial fertiliser. But at this point in time, if we said no to artificial fertiliser there would be a dramatic fall in the production capacity of this country.

Martin Lines: If we are looking at food security and the risk of fertiliser coming in, where are we using that fertiliser and what are we growing with it? Let us think about whether we are producing the food we want, energy crops, ethanol or other things. It is that balance. Many livestock farmers who have moved on to herbal leys or added clovers have found that they actually do not need nitrogen because they have built up a soil system and are getting similar, if not more, grass output. It is about putting nitrogen where we need it and using the balance sheet of organic materials across the country, rather than just having it all over on one side of the country.

Tom Bradshaw: That is a 10-year project.

Lord Duncan of Springbank: What proportion would green fertilisers be right now?

Tom Bradshaw: There are one or two companies making green fertiliser, but it would be in tiny percentages. Some comes from recycled sewage sludge as well, which is an interesting concept. McCain and some retailers are involved in that.

The Chair: Mr Lines, may I ask for more information about what you just said about herbal leys, regenerative farming and the benefit to nitrogen? If you have data on that, it would be of help to the committee.

Before we move on, may I just ask about the rules on emissions? We have regulations around water, NVZs and farming rules for water, but we do not have regulations around emissions to air. Do you think that is a gap that needs filling? Would farmers do more to stop emissions and cover slurry lagoons, for example, if they were required to?

Martin Lines: There is already regulation about air quality and ammonia coming from fertilisers. Many slurry lagoons and tanks have to be covered already. It is about incentivising that.

The Chair: I am sorry—I just want to clear this up. Is it compulsory for farmers to cover their slurry tanks?

Martin Lines: All new builds have to have covers, but many that were built not long ago do not have the infrastructure to put them on. I believe they should be putting covers on, and we should be using inhibitors on ureas after a cut-off date, but many are choosing not to put that on. It is about making sure that the framework is there so that everybody does the right practice, but also that they have the time to invest into it.

The Chair: Are you saying that it is not enforced?

Martin Lines: Yes.

Tom Bradshaw: Can we just think about the financial cost of this as well? There is a real financial cost involved in these decisions. If we are to cover all our slurry stores, where is that investment coming from? A report by Kite Consulting, the dairy consultant, suggested that 2p per litre of milk needs to be invested over the next decade to meet environmental legislation. That is not currently coming out of the marketplace.

The Chair: That is important.

Tom Bradshaw: There is a responsibility to do it, but somebody has to pay and that is a critical element.

The Chair: Thank you. We will put that to the Government.

Q47 Lord Trees: What you have said leads on to my question. What are some challenges of moving from synthetic fertilisers to recycled nutrients such as digestates, biosolids and slurry? Can I put in a specific point about slurry? We have heard quite a lot from previous witnesses about the acidification of slurry in terms of nitrogen. We have heard in a previous inquiry that this benefits methane emissions, but it has been suggested that the acidification of slurry and then applying it to pasture has a detrimental effect on the soil microbiome. Can you comment on that, please?

Tom Bradshaw: On the soil microbiome, I would want to understand the science that sits behind that. For all these additives it is really important that we have the full scientific picture behind the adoption of these techniques before there are any detrimental impacts; that should be a driving force. When we look at the use of manures, Martin highlighted that our livestock industry is not geographically spread across the country. On pelletisation, dewatering and transportation, I believe it is getting to a point where it is in everybody’s interests to get there, but as I briefly mentioned that is a 10-year project. It is not suddenly going to happen. It is probably a 20-year project, if we are brutally honest, and again it takes huge investment.

The question is, where is the investment to deliver that going to come from? The ambition is laudable. The circular economy approach that Secretary of State Steve Reed has is a really exciting part that has been completely overlooked and could reduce waste as well, but there is going to need to be a lot of funding to deliver that ambition.

Lord Trees: We have done it for climate change and decarbonising through levies. Is there room for levies?

Martin Lines: On whom?

Lord Trees: On the consumer, basically.

Martin Lines: Yes. Someone has to pay.

Lord Trees: We are paying about an extra 10% on our electricity bills in order to support sustainability.

Martin Lines: For much of this, the agriculture sector needs significant investment, and given the profitability of the sector at the moment with the commodity price and food prices, there is very little money left for farmers to invest. The consumer at the other end has to have a levy, or whatever it is. There has to be additional money coming down to put that infrastructure in. Farmers cannot do it, and we are already facing legal targets and environmental regulation. Farmers are really struggling to do this. We also just touched on acidification and anaerobic digestion. It can be really good, but done wrong it can be really bad. We need some better data and evidence to do it.

Storage and transportation are really challenging. As an arable farmer, I cannot get the grants to put the storage in because I do not have livestock, but I might want to take hold of some and store it over winter ready for spring application and take it away from a livestock farmer. We need to have a bigger look at it. When using organic materials, the nutrient variation is huge, so we really need to get that understanding going.

The Chair: What you are saying is really of interest to the committee. If you could supplement your evidence in writing, both the NFU and the NFFN, that would be very helpful to this committee’s inquiry. We are right up against the clock. I am going to go to Earl Russell and then straight to Lord Rooker.

Earl Russell: Thank you, gentlemen, for your evidence. I want to ask you about the use of emerging technologies to increase nitrogen recycling. Do you see this as an opportunity going forward?

Tom Bradshaw: As I have already said, it is a really exciting opportunity. Within the whole circular approach, there is a workstream that I feel is underdeveloped. There was going to be a significant investment into the River Wye catchment and that has been withdrawn at the moment, but we do need a pilot project somewhere. Why not start with the highest-profile catchment there is and let us see whether we can deliver something really meaningful there?

I always say that the problem is not the chickens but what comes out at the other end. There are plenty of scientific ways to deal with that, and then we can have a really valuable product.

Q48 Lord Rooker: Can we just change the conversation? Your food is not all sold in farm shops; it is sold in supermarkets, and you are not in control of that. If we think of the food companies that use your products to manufacture food, and the retailers, what is the effect of their requirements in influencing the farming practices in terms of nitrogen? Is there an influence?

Martin Lines: I would say there is a huge influence, particularly when we look at milling wheats and other things. They are pushing for 13% proteins to improve their ability to make bread. To get 13% you have to put additional nitrogen in. If you come back down to 12% or 12.5%, that could still make a good loaf but the composition would be different, and actually that would reduce the nitrogen.

In many other areas, particularly when we look at the scope, nitrogen has a huge carbon footprint. Many of the corporations are now looking at their scope 3 emissions. They are driving production outputs from farmers through contracts, but that means pushing for output to meet the price point, so their carbon emissions need to start to come into that. They are looking at opportunities and rewards to reduce carbon emissions through reducing fertiliser use, building a wider rotation, rewarding regenerative actions and focusing on how to mitigate carbon emissions.

Tom Bradshaw: I would go to the food price issue rather than blaming the middle person. The decision we have as a country is, are we happy to spend more on food, and are we going to deliver that investment? I then move to import standards; the very real risk is that we are going to end up with a higher system of standards here, carbon fertiliser tax being a perfect example, but if we are not going to tax the food that comes in using that fertiliser—which has not been taxed—all we are doing is making ourselves less competitive. There is definitely a role for the retail and the processing sector, but we have to have a conversation about what our import standards look like. Are we happy that eventually we will have to invest more in our food system to deliver all the improvements we have talked about?

Lord Rooker: Am I right in thinking that neither of you is producing animals and that you are both arable farmers?

Tom Bradshaw: We represent all farmers.

Lord Rooker: I know who you represent; I just wanted to ask the question, because the meat industry is a huge industry worth mega billions. The processors provide to the supermarkets. Do they require anything to be done to keep the colour of meat? A couple of weeks ago we heard evidence that without the necessary inputs, meat would not look nice and red; it would turn brown. Do the processors have any influence over the use of nutrients and nitrogen?

Tom Bradshaw: The different red meat processors are driving sustainability in different ways. They have different schemes, depending on who you are supplying and which end of the retail market you are supplying. I would not say they are doing anything that in any way stipulates that farmers include things in their rations. You can have a completely grass-fed animal and it will be 24, 28 or 30 months old when it is killed, as opposed to one that has been finished inside and might be 15 months old when it is killed. They will be very different rations, but they both have a marketplace. I do not think that is being driven by the processors at the moment.

Martin Lines: There is some push because they are looking to reduce the methane emissions from the red meat sector, so they are looking for animals to finish quicker—the diet that is going in and the efficiency of that animal. If you produce grass-fed meat you are going to have an older animal feeding from the grass, but if you want a quicker finish you are adding in barleys or feeds to get the efficiency to get it out. What is driving that? Is it a methane focus? Is it a carbon focus? Is it nitrogen? Farmers are just in the middle trying to work out how we can provide what the market wants, while the market is sending different signals to us and the consumer about what we should be doing.

Lord Rooker: I have picked up your message: we really have to watch the trade deals more than anything else.

Tom Bradshaw: In the long term they set our standards of production in this country, and if we want a competitive agricultural industry we have to make sure it is not undermined by what is coming in from overseas.

The Chair: Thank you very much. It would be really useful to have some information, if you have it, on the impact on farm practices of the constraints supplied by the supply chains, up stream and down stream of farmers.

Before we close this session, I have one other question: do farmers think they have all the data they need for managing nitrogen and using it more efficiently in the system? For example, are they able to discriminate between ammonia emissions from organic inputs to the soil and those from inorganic inputs and artificial fertilisers?

Tom Bradshaw: I do not think you can ever have enough information, but I also think the ability to utilise that information is important. A lot of farmers are very time poor: they are already working too many hours and sometimes simplification is favoured over making a system more complicated, so utilising that data can be a barrier.

One thing we have not focused on here is nitrous oxide emissions, which are a real unknown. When we look at climate change in particular, the science behind nitrous oxide probably has a huge role to play in the future. It is an unknown pollutant and there is definitely a relationship with nitrogen fertiliser that we have to understand.

The Chair: Is that to the same extent from organic fertilisers, such as manures, and artificial fertilisers?

Tom Bradshaw: Nitrous oxide is released from both, but farming systems can also have an impact. It is a complicated picture, but I do not think we have the science that sits underneath that.

The Chair: It would be useful nevertheless, would it not?

Tom Bradshaw: We need it to be able to make meaningful decisions.

Martin Lines: There is a lot of data available for those who are engaged, but many are not engaged and it is not presented in a way that they can easily understand. So that peer-to-peer learning and knowledge exchange from farmer to farmer is absolutely critical. You are sharing what works or what somebody else has benefited from so that more support—bringing farmers together to share what is working and who has benefited from what data—will accelerate a transition, rather than a scientific paper that lands on a farmer’s kitchen table that just does not make sense to them and whose value they do not understand. It is about the practices and the right data to give them the knowledge transfer to try different things. It is trial and error; you will not do a whole thing in the whole farm straightaway because you have to learn by your practices and get on with it.

The Chair: Excellent. Thank you very much to our two panellists; your expert views and opinions on this are really helpful to our inquiry. We look forward to receiving the supplementary evidence and we appreciate your willingness to answer any further questions that committee members may send in writing to the committee. Thank you again, and with that I close today’s public session.