The ‘Better Farming for Water‘ campaign is a national campaign aiming to support and accelerate the adoption of actions on all farms to improve all water bodies, where agriculture is a significant pressure, to Good or High ecological status.
Catchment Action Plans
The campaign will initially concentrate on the following eight river catchments: Bandon-Ilen, Barrow, Blackwater, Boyne, Lee, Nore, Slaney and Suir. Each of the initial eight river catchments will have a bespoke plan prepared to provide a pathway to deliver water quality improvements.
Context
In 2024, the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue T.D., requested Teagasc to lead a multi-actor water quality advisory campaign to deliver clear, simple and positive messaging to enhance farmers’, as well as the broader agri-food industry’s understanding of the agriculture pressures on water quality and the need for improvement. As a result of this request, Teagasc has developed the document ‘Better Farming for Water’ to guide the campaign, which can be found here (PDF).
Agriculture in Ireland has a significant role to play in helping the country to achieve good water quality targets as set by the Water Framework Directive. However, farmers require technical support to increase their understanding of the impacts of farming on water quality and the actions to minimise the losses of nutrients, sediment and pesticides to water bodies. The ‘Better Farming for Water’ campaign will build on existing water quality programmes such as ACP, ACRES, ASSAP, Farming for Water EIP, Waters of LIFE, Blue Dot Catchments, Slaney project (and others) to improve water quality. The multi-actor (farmers, advisors/researchers, agri-food industry, community, government) approach to support farmers will ensure that challenges and solutions to address local water quality are delivered at farm, catchment and regional scale. This campaign is part of a wider whole-of-government approach to improve water quality.
Aim and Objectives
The aim of the ‘Better Farming for Water’ campaign is to support and accelerate the adoption of actions on all farms to improve all water bodies (where agriculture is a significant pressure) to Good or High Ecological Status.
The objective of the ‘Better Farming for Water’ campaign is to support all farmers to reduce the loads of nitrogen, phosphate, sediment and pesticides entering our river network through either diffuse or point source pathways from agricultural sources. This will involve targeting three critical management areas, namely: 1) Nutrient management; 2) Farmyard Management and 3) Land Management.
This will be achieved through the on-farm adoption of the following 8-Actions for Change.
8-Actions for Change
Nutrient Management
- Reduce purchased nitrogen (N) & phosphorus (P) surplus per hectare
- Ensure soil fertility is optimal for lime, phosphorus and potassium
- Ensure application of fertiliser and organic manure at appropriate times and conditions
Farmyard Management
- Have sufficient slurry and soiled water storage capacity
- Manage and minimise nutrient loss from farmyards and roadways
Land Management
- Fence off watercourses to prevent bovine access
- Promote targeted use of mitigation actions such as riparian margins, buffer strips & sediment traps to mitigate nutrient and sediment loss to water
- Maintain over-winter green cover to reduce nutrient leaching from tillage soils