14 August 2009

By Jayne Armstrong, Countryside Management Delivery, DARD

With second cut silage being harvested, now is an ideal time to empty your slurry tanks. By spreading slurry when growing conditions are favourable, this will help to make maximum use of the valuable nutrients in slurry and farm effluents and reduces the potential for pollution.

The Nitrates Directive aims to protect water quality, and one of the requirements of the Nitrates Action Programme is a closed period for spreading slurry during the late autumn and winter months.  Remember that organic manures, excluding farmyard manure and dirty water, must not be applied between 15 October and 31 January. To ensure that farms can meet this requirement, and have additional flexibility in the timing of application, all farms must have at least 26 weeks storage for the livestock manure from the pig and poultry enterprises and 22 weeks for other enterprises. You should aim to empty tanks completely before the closed period commences. When you are applying organic manures only do so when soil and weather conditions are favourable.

More information about the Nitrates Action Programme, slurry spreading and storage is available in the Nitrates Action Programme Guidance and the revised ‘Code of Good Agricultural Practice’ for the prevention of pollution of Water, Air and Soil. Alternatively you can contact your local Countryside Management Delivery Branch staff or go online at www.ruralni.gov.uk/index/environment/countrysidemanagement.htm.

Notes to Editors:

All media enquiries to DARD Press Office, tel: 028 9052 4619.