Not only inheritance emissions, but also run-off from the land is becoming increasingly important for arable farmers. The Agricultural Sprayer Academy visited the Bayer Forward Farm in Abbenes (North Holland) on Thursday 15 March to pay attention to this. Awareness is increasing, but still has a way to go.
Michel Jansen is Product Stewardship Expert at Bayer Crop Science. On March 15, he led a group of arable farmers, from the Agricultural Sprayer Academy, around the Bayer Forward Farm in Abbenes to demonstrate the importance of yard and parcel emissions. It was also shown how new techniques can help to reduce emissions.
In 2017 you established the Bayer Forward Farm in Abbenes. What it is the purpose of this company?
"The Forward Farm is not a test farm, but a conventional arable farm where we are guests. We demonstrate sustainability in practice here. It is not the intention to devise castles in the air, but systems or solutions that require a relatively low investment and are accessible. Arable farmers can gain ideas here and implement them on their farms. We try to involve politicians and demonstrate how sustainability works out in practice. Three pillars have been set up for this: working responsibly, working with nature and technology."
The ASA meeting of 15 March focused in particular on yard and parcel emissions. Why this subject?
"Agriculturists have to deal with emissions in the yard and in the land. With a filling and washing area, farm emissions can be prevented. In the country it concerns drift, run-off and drainage. The latter will play an important role in the near future. Drainage will be included in the approval file from 2020 onwards. Certain substances will then have to deal with restrictions if they are washed in too quickly. You may then only be allowed to apply them on land that has not been drained, or you have to take technical measures. We are testing various systems. aren't they yet."
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In the past, and still today, much attention was paid to drift. Is this of minor importance?
"The role of drift in the emission issue is relatively limited. About 15% comes from drift, against 50% from farmyard emissions and 35% from run-off and drainage. A lot of attention has been paid to drift from the Activities Decree. Even now. Look at the requirement for drift limitation, which goes from 50% to 75%. Drift can be calculated well with models that government institutions have to work with. Inheritance emission is much more difficult to calculate because it occurs incidentally. Infiltration models are available for plot emission, which can be used to calculate drainage Runoff remains a climate-related incident and difficult to calculate with a model. We are working on a prediction module that can identify runoff-sensitive locations and apply solutions locally."
Systems are available to prevent inheritance. Are they applied sufficiently?
"It starts with awareness. Farmers recognize the problem, but underestimate their own contribution. Only when they see it concretely do you notice that action is being taken. Bayer argues that water samples can be handed in, in order to get an idea of the emissions. Perhaps "This stimulates emission reduction. Various systems are available for collecting and processing wastewater. At the moment, it is mainly the forerunners who are investing in this. The largest group is waiting. Our opinion is that doing something is always better than doing nothing."
What can arable farmers do to prevent runoff?
"The more targeted application of crop protection products with the help of precision agriculture is a good step in the right direction. It is important to prevent the first runoff, because it contains the highest concentration of agents. This can be done by constructing thresholds between the potato ridges. in dry periods this has advantages, because more moisture is retained Another possibility is milling a trench parallel to the ditch (to retain water) For the long term we are working on a win-win situation, for example buffer strips that are good for biodiversity, where a trench can be constructed and thus help to reduce plot emissions."
This interview is part of the Agricultural Sprayer Academy and its partners.