Balancing profitable farming with environmental protection
Pig farming receives its fair share of bad press but it’s important to recognise the high standards that farmers operate to.
The larger pig farming businesses, with either 2,000-plus finishing pig places (more than 30kg) or 750 sow places (including served gilts), currently operate with environmental permits. These demonstrate how finely-tuned their production systems are. In fact, the environmental damage to flora and fauna widely attributed to livestock farms is deemed to be below harmful levels by the Environment Agency. If you’re one of these pig producers, or are planning to expand, we’re holding a meeting later this month which you can’t afford to miss.
Some important changes have been made to the environmental permitting standards over the last few months and our meeting at 4pm on June 28 in Kenilworth, Warwickshire, will explain what these mean for affected farmers, whether they are currently operating with a permit or if they are considering expanding the size of their business.
The Environment Agency will also explain how permits will be reviewed over coming months and answer any questions or queries people may have.
Having an environmental permit is not much more work than operating under an assurance scheme. It simply ensure farmers have a good environmental management system in place which helps reduce pollution to the environment and ensures all resources are used efficiently. They will also be monitoring emissions from their farms.
The key emissions monitored by pig farmers and the Environment Agency are odour, ammonia, nitrogen and phosphorus, the latter two being particularly relevant to drinking water quality and farmers are extremely diligent so as to avoid any contamination of water sources.
AHDB Pork has been working with farmers to improve water quality and to reduce emissions. For example, our Lancashire-based Focus Farmer’s most recently-built finishing building features several new technologies and novel methods that should help reduce emissions, including ammonia. Watch this space for updates and details of future Focus Farm meetings.
All the details about this meeting can be found on the AHDB Pork website: http://pork.ahdb.org.uk/events/ but if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch. If you would like to attend, please let us know so we cater for the correct number of people, simply email: ke.events@ahdb.org.uk or Tel: 01904 771212.
Angela Cliff is AHDB Pork knowledge exchange manager (Central)
