The Earl of Leicester (Con)

My Lords, I thank noble Lords on the committee for agreeing to undertake this inquiry into nitrogen. Although it was my suggestion, I can take no credit for it; that must go to two scientists who worked with me on the charity SongBird Survival’s scientific sub-committee. Incidentally, I came off its board last year. After one of our meetings, as an afterthought I asked the scientists present whether they might have any suggestions for the committee’s next inquiry. Paul Dolman, professor of conservation ecology at UEA, and Dr Alex Lees of Manchester Metropolitan University exclaimed, almost in unison, “Nitrogen pollution—it’s the big elephant in the room that no one is talking about”. This is echoed by the opening remarks of the Sustainable Nitrogen Alliance’s briefing: that nitrogen pollution is one of the most urgent but overlooked environmental challenges. A year and a half ago, it too gave an illuminating briefing that our chair and I attended. It is important to note the word “sustainable” in the title of the Sustainable Nitrogen Alliance. While my initial suggestion for the name of this inquiry was “nitrogen pollution”, it is encouraging that throughout the year-long evidence-gathering process and inquiry, it gradually became clear that we should retitle the inquiry as “Nitrogen: Time to Reduce, Recycle, Reuse”, because it is such an important resource for us humans and our planet. It is essential for life and food production, but mismanagement makes it a major pollutant. I also add my thanks to our committee staff. They are absolute stars, going above and beyond, and continually produce excellent research papers for us. The subject of nitrogen is so huge that, as a farmer, I shall try to limit my contribution to that subject alone—indeed, to arable farming. By some happy happenstance, I am sitting next to my noble friend Lord Ashcombe, who tells me he is going to talk about slurry, so I shall talk about arable. I shall leave other colleagues to speak more knowledgeably on the many other aspects of nitrogen. Here I should declare my interests as laid out in the register as a large-scale mixed farmer in North Norfolk, albeit following the principles of regenerative agriculture, which aim to regenerate and nurture our greatest asset—our soil. As our debate in Grand Committee unfolds, it will reveal that farming is one of the greatest culprits with regard to nitrogen pollution. Some £420 million of fertiliser is wasted annually, as our chair said, through inefficient farming practices. The inefficient and unsustainable use of artificial nitrogen, and indeed farmyard manure, leads to large reactive nitrogen losses to the atmosphere and to terrestrial and aquatic systems. Undoubtedly, excess nitrogen use has a deleterious effect on biodiversity. It is this point that the two scientist friends I mentioned at the beginning of my speech were making. The area of nitrogen-sensitive habitats in the UK with exceedance of nutrient nitrogen-critical loads was 57.6% in 2017 and is probably more now. That represents just over 42,000 square kilometres. The area of acid-sensitive habitats of soil and forest ecosystems in the UK that exceed acidity-critical loads was 38.8% or 27,250 square kilometres. There is a way that farming can also be a provider of one of the solutions. I am afraid that organic farming, although it clearly could be a solution to nitrogen pollution if overwhelmingly adopted, would lead to mass starvation throughout the world. Currently, only 2% of land in the UK is farmed organically. Although I say I am a farmer, my degree was in history of art. So while I understand my businesses, I do not necessarily comprehend the detail and spend a lot of time asking silly questions of my team—and they are often the best questions. In 2019 I set our farm management team a challenge to see whether they could farm without agricultural chemicals and artificial nitrogen by 2030. It was an 11-year target. There was a sharp intake of breath but they accepted the challenge. Two years later, the broad acres manager came to me to say that he had stopped using insecticides —indeed, we have barely used them since 2021 except on some seed dressings—but he also told me that if we were to stop using nitrogen, our yields would plummet. To illustrate this, from time to time this team experiments with applying varying degrees of nitrogen to the same crop in the same field. We have had a number of groups from the World Wildlife Fund, Nestlé and Marks & Spencer visit our fields. Some individuals express a preference for organic farming. When we show them our cereal trial plots, that usually convinces them that organic farming is not going to feed the world. The crop with no nitrogen at all looks markedly sparse when compared with those with 60%, 80% or 100% of the recommended fertiliser application. Financially we would not survive—although, granted, we have not built up experience in organic farming. The farm manager says that he is now using his grey matter much more as he figures out how to make regen farming work, learning from mistakes, having an independent agronomist who is not attached to an ag-chem firm—who of course may want to sell you a little more product—and, when he sees insects in a crop, not immediately reaching for the spray can. He recognises that predator insects such as ladybirds, lacewings, parasitic wasps and hoverflies that attack swarms of aphids do the work for free. Similarly, our potato enterprise manager took my aspiration to heart and reduced the recommended nitrogen application by 10%. The crop still looked well, and the yield was as expected. He did the same thing the following year, with similar results. In the third year—this is important because it demonstrates how improved technology also plays a part—we bought new precision potato planters that place the nitrogen fertiliser next to the seed. This yielded a further saving of 22% in the amount of nitrogen applied. Over three years he had achieved a compound cost saving of 37%, which goes straight to the bottom line, with no discernible diminution of yield. Importantly for this debate, he had also achieved a saving for the environment, with reduced run-off of unused nitrogen into watercourses or the atmosphere.