Welcome to BFFE-working process

In the year 1998 started the Baltic Farmers Forum on Environment,BFFE in Visby Conference. Nordic Farmers Council, NBC gathered all the relevant agricultural and co-operative organisations from the 11 Baltic Sea countries.  The Swedish Farmers Federation, LRF managed the hospitality in the Visby starting conference. The second big BFFE-conference was organised by the Finnish organisations MTK,SLC and Pellervo in the autumn 2004 in Haikko.

All the time the Baltic farmleaders have participated in policy work of the Baltic Sea conservation process. The agriculture sector has recognised the response and role of agriculture in the Baltic Sea protection process. Many agriculture experts have given their contributions to Helcom and other political processes around the Baltic Sea.

The members of BFFE want to continue the change of information about the Baltic Sea development. This work is demanding and long perspective. The farmers think that it necessary to develop the transparent cooperation between the farming organisations and the governmental bodies and including other organisations and NGO:s. From the farmers point of view it is very important that agri-environmental programmes are sustainable both ecologically and economically. EU has also big responsibility for creating new reasonable measures and guidelines  for the better future of the Baltic Sea.

BFFE will encourage the different stakeholders for active change of information so that the big public can have the realistic analysis of the state and development of Baltic Sea. BFFE as the farmers network organisation wants to give its own professional information package by BFFE Newsletter. BFFE is thanking all the co-partners who have participated in creating professional knowledge about the Baltic Sea in this BFFE Newsletter.

All of You are very welcome to the sides of BFFE Newsletter!

With best wishes,

Seppo Kallio
Secretary General of NBC 

Contents:

1. Baltic Farmers welcome the protection of the Baltic Sea
2. Towards a cleaner, living Baltic Sea
3. HELCOM – seeking dialogue with the farmers
4. Water protection in Finnish agriculture
5. Into a third period of the Finnish Agri-environmental Programme – can we turn the good development into a success story?

1. Baltic Farmers welcome the protection of the Baltic Sea

The BFFE-Visby Conference in 1998 started a new period in the co-operation between the farmers and co-operative organisations surrounding the Baltic Sea. BFFE is a network process in which the farming sector is able to give its political and knowledge capacity to the Baltic Sea protection work. Firstly the farmers understand the role of this sector in the bio-system of the Baltic Sea. Secondly we are ready to take our responsibility in the protection policies of the Baltic Sea. At the same time we want to encourage the increasing co-operation with the other economical and social partners including industries, transport, energy, fishery, forestry and private households. Especially we would appreciate a new type of constructive co-operation with the democratic environment organisations.

We, the farmers are ready to play a positive role, but it is also clear that the agricultural sector in general must have the capacity and adequate time to adjust to both the economic situation and the biological process. We would also like to strongly support the Baltic Sea protection policy-processes such as the Helsinki Commission and Baltic 21.

After the collapsed communism in Eastern Europe, economic activities have largely increased in the Baltic Sea Region. This has resulted in more environmental burdens but at the same time in better use of new technology and better environmental practices. In the short term we can see that production and transport will radically increase. This is also the case in agri-business. This new situation has created a lot of new co-operation possibilities and challenges in agriculture. From this point of view it is necessary to intensify educational, research and technical programs and co-operation.

The changes in agricultural policies have been remarkable during the latest years. The EU's Common Agricultural Policy has played a leading role in this. The new agri-environmental schemes have quickly helped the environment situation in agriculture. For example, in Finland the use of fertilizers and pesticides has diminished radically. The reduction in the use of phosphorous has been 60 % during this agri-enviromental scheme. 91 % of the Finnish farmers have involved in the CAP-agri-environmental schemes. The cattle farms have also invested very much in environmental technology. It is important to continue with these positive developments.  These examples show that the farmers have done serious work in helping the protection of the Baltic Sea.

The new reform of CAP will continue policies so that agriculture becomes more and more environmental friendly and ecologically sustainable. It is especially important that the farmers have enough economic resources for these programs. I hope that consumers and politicians understand that demanding environmental legislation results in higher costs in the foodstuffs chain. That's why the EU-budget ought to have enough money for financing these new agri-environmental programs. It ought to be clear that all the Baltic farmers can manage only if their economic base is solid.

The European Union has created a new policy-program called the Northern Dimension. All the countries in the Baltic region have strongly supported this EU-initiative. Now this program has more and more concrete activities and tasks, especially in the environment sector. I hope that the food chain could have a stronger role in the future development of the Northern Dimension policy. This could be one of the coals in our BFFE-co-operation, too. 

Esa Härmälä, President of MTK, The Central Union of Agricultural Producers and Forest Owners in Finland

2. Towards a cleaner, living Baltic Sea

In protecting the Baltic Sea, the most central objectives for Finland and the international cooperation within the Baltic Sea region are the prevention of eutrophication, the reduction of risks involved in oil and chemical transportation, curbing the adverse affects of the accumulation of hazardous substances in the environment and food chains, and conserving biodiversity.

We also know that the water quality of the Finnish coast is primarily affected by emissions from our own country. The wastewaters of industry and densely populated areas are already being tackled, but decreasing the nonpoint source pollution from sparsely populated areas as well as agriculture and forestry is far more problematic.

In Finland, water protection policy has been a target of long-term planning ever since the early 1970s, with the use of national water protection programmes. The third Water Protection Targets period (1996-2005) is about to reach its conclusion, and officials are currently drafting an assessment on how successfully the programme has been implemented.

This spring, the Finnish Ministry of the Environment has commenced the preparation of water protection guidelines for the coming ten years, until 2015. The purpose is to find ways to decrease the eutrophication of waters in particular, but also to address other water protection issues. These guidelines will also support the implementation of Finland’s programme for the protection of the Baltic Sea, as well as the devising of the water management plans regulated in the law on the provision of water management services.

In cooperation with other officials and instances, the environmental administration has launched wide-scale preparations for surveying the actions affecting our waters, for classifying the state of the waters, for setting environmental quality objectives for our waters and for drawing up water management plans. I consider this work to be of utmost significance as a far-reaching opportunity to improve the state of our inland and coastal waters as well as our groundwater, based on the needs of both the environment and the people.

In order to obtain a good state of the waters, we will also compose water management plans to cover the Finnish coastal areas by 2009. The planning is based on wide-scale cooperation with various stakeholder groups and the opinions of citizens. In planning water management systems, we are increasingly concentrating on biological knowledge, and this knowledge pool should be further enhanced.

The general usability classification of waters is an indicator of the average quality of waters and their suitability for recreational use, fisheries and water supply. According to the recently completed usability classification, the quality of Finnish coastal waters in the Gulf of Bothnia is mainly good or excellent, but the water quality of rivers flowing into the coast is merely passable. Particularly in the Gulf of Finland and the Archipelago, the state of the waters has clearly deteriorated, and the area with a water quality classification of only satisfactory has extended significantly onwards since 1997 from the coastline to the open sea.

This is, of course, unfortunate news, considering all of our shared efforts to protect the Baltic Sea more effectively. For the part of the Archipelago, we know that we still have our work cut out for us - after all, the agriculture of Southwest Finland is sill included as the only Finnish target on the so-called ‘hot spot’ list of the Helsinki Commission (HELCOM).

Eutrophication, the most visible examples of which are algae blooms and slime build-up on fishing tackle, is one of the most important problems demanding action for the Baltic Sea. We thus must further decrease the nutrient loads travelling from land to the sea. In Finland, this is being accomplished with, for instance, environmental subsidies which are included in the agri-environmental scheme and the Horizontal Rural Development Programme. Finnish farmers themselves and their organisations have also been very active, and have published handbooks on, for example, preventing eutrophication.

Point source nutrient loads, such as emissions from industry and the wastewater treatment plants of communities, have been successfully curbed in Finland in recent years. There does remain a need for further action, but our main focus should now be placed on nonpoint source pollution. This is, also due to the high occurrence of emissions, the most difficult target for emissions reductions. We must reduce nonpoint source pollution not only from agriculture but also from sparsely populated areas, forestry and the wastewaters of water traffic.

Although internal measures within Finland are required, the most effective single means to reduce water-eutrophicating loads into the Baltic Sea is to enhance the wastewater treatment of St Petersburg. The south-western waste water treatment plant of St Petersburg is under construction and is scheduled to be finished this year. The situation will also change after Poland has followed through with its ten-year programme to update its environmental policy into EU condition.

As mentioned, however, eutrophication is not the only problem for the Baltic Sea. The increasing oil and chemical transportation on the Baltic Sea, particularly in the Gulf of Finland, also increases the risk of accidents. According to the latest data, the oil traffic during 2004 already exceeded the 100-million-ton limit, and is expected to reach 190 million tons by 2010. It would only take one major oil disaster to frustrate years of protective efforts within a few hours.

More and more attention has been paid to improving the safety of shipping. For the protection of the Baltic Sea, it is of utmost importance that vessels in poor condition do not sail its waters, and that single-hull tankers are not used to transport the most hazardous cargo. The European Union has accepted an amendment to the regulation on double-hull oil tankers, the purpose of which is to speed up the replacement of the oldest single-hull oil tankers. The regulation applies to all EU Member State ports and all single-hull oil tankers sailing under the flag of any EU Member State.

The efforts to minimize the risks involved in marine transport have yielded good results. A new vessel traffic control system has been adopted in the Gulf of Finland, and additional measures have been agreed upon within HELCOM regarding the harmonization of ice classifications and icebreaker use.

The coastal states of the Baltic Sea, with the exception of Russia, have been drawing up an application to the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) in order for the Baltic Sea to be granted the status of a Particularly Sensitive Sea Area (PSSA). A proposal for the additional measures required for the application has been submitted to IMO.

Hazardous substances and their environmental impacts have been overshadowed by the issue of eutrophication. We all know that there are high concentrations of dioxin in Baltic herrings and other fatty fish species, particularly in old individuals. Lately discussions have also increasingly involved tributyltin (TBT).

In the marine areas off the coast of Turku and Naantali, where the conditions call for relatively extensive dredging and banking, and where, over time, TBT has been released to the sea particularly through shipyard operations, high concentrations of TBT have been measured. However, the TBT issue was not brought to a wider discussion until the initiation of the Vuosaari Harbour Project in Helsinki.

At present, the data on the concentrations of organic tin compounds in coastal areas and their impacts on the organisms of the Baltic Sea are still inadequate; we are only now beginning to grasp the full extent of the problem. Last year the Finnish Environment Institute, under the direction of the Ministry of the Environment, drafted environmental protection guidelines for dredging and banking. These guidelines set strict quality criteria for hazardous substances in dredging masses. Along with Germany, Finland has been one of the leading actors in this issue.

The guidelines are primarily aimed at controlling officials and project planning. They will be applied to the dredging and banking of bottom sediments in Finnish territorial and, when applicable, inland waters. With regard to TBT, we have had to adjust to a situation in which emissions from vessels will continue legally until 2008; thus concentrations will remain high in broad areas. These areas include, among others, merchant shipping ports, marinas and shipyards, as well as their immediate environments. Sea routes also most probably constitute one such area.

With the enforcement of prohibitions against use, TBT loads will gradually decrease, as will the build-ups of biodegradable organic tin compounds in the sediments. Several research projects have also been launched in Finland, the purpose of which is to study the scale of the problem and the possible health impacts of organic tin compounds.

We already know the solutions to many of the problems the Baltic Sea is facing. And where there is a shared will, there will also be a way to implement the solutions. With internal Finnish measures, we must improve the state of our coastal waters. It is also clear that we must take the necessary actions on all sectors of society. Improving the ecological state of the Baltic Sea is a long-term commitment; the effect of these improvements on the marine environment will not be seen immediately. In this crucial work we need the input of all parties involved.

Jan-Erik Enestam, Minister of the Environment in Finland

3. HELCOM – seeking dialogue with the farmers

Agriculture today is a very large part of the basic economic activities in the Baltic Sea region. Almost 25 % of the 1,7 million sq km drainage area around the sea is used for agricultural cultivation, and millions of people from the coastal countries are engaged in agricultural production. This sector is of enormous importance and an integral part of sustainable societies surrounding the region.

Helcom

But at the same time agriculture remains one of the main sources of pollution entering the Baltic Sea. Almost 60 % of nutrients coming into the sea originate from farmland (60% of total nitrogen and 50% of total phosphorus input). Excessive amounts of nutrients entering the Baltic Sea are seriously disturbing the functioning of marine ecosystems.

In 1988, the Helsinki Commission, an intergovernmental organisation of the coastal countries, designed to protect the Baltic Sea marine environment, adopted a set of revolutionary measures to significantly curb nutrient inputs into the sea. The target set by HELCOM called for reductions of 50% nutrient inputs into the Baltic Sea by 1995. However, it turned out to be too difficult to achieve, especially where nitrogen inputs were concerned. Even the elaboration of the more specific targets by HELCOM in 1998 has not been realised by all countries.

Yet, still significant progress has been achieved in reducing nutrient loads from point sources, such as municipal and industrial wastewater treatment plants. Almost all of the coastal countries also managed to reach the target of a 50% reduction in loads from point sources for phosphorus. Unfortunately, measures to reduce nutrients from agriculture have fallen short of their 50 % reduction target. And even worse, following the recent EU enlargement in the Baltic Sea area, agricultural production is expected to increase, which is likely to increase discharges.

According to forecasts for 2005, scientists predict that municipalities and industries in all the nine coastal countries should be technically capable of reaching the 50 % reduction target for nitrogen and phosphorus emissions from point sources. But the agricultural sector will still face difficulties in retaining nutrients.

Further implementation of HELCOM agri-environmental measures is expected to eventually lead to reductions in nutrient loads from agriculture, but there is evidently a considerable time lag between the implementation of agricultural water protection measures and any visible effects in the waters.

HELCOM has stressed the need to accelerate the process of integrating environmental aspects and sustainable development into agriculture, and improving agricultural practices to reduce pollution from diffuse sources. This entails limiting adverse environmental effects and utilising nutrients more efficiently. Several HELCOM countries have a comprehensive and coherent legislation covering the most important aspects concerning HELCOM regulations.  Legislation and rules are followed up by regulations, Codes of Good Agricultural Practices (GAP-codes), and other measures, e.g. recommendations in order to ensure implementation in agricultural practice. The two major weak points are the lack of knowledge of what is really happening at farm level and what the real effects on the aquatic environment are as a result of the application of required measures.

Baltic Sea Regional Project

Important activities to promote sustainable agriculture are undertaken in the framework of the Baltic Sea Regional Project (BSRP). It has been enabled by a 5.5 million USD grant from the Global Environment Facility (GEF). The project is managed by HELCOM in co-operation with the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), the International Baltic Sea Fisheries Commission (IBSFC) and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU). It aims to introduce an ecosystem-based approach to the use of marine, coastal and agricultural resources in the Baltic States, Russia and Poland. Measures taken on farmland are an essential element of the project, and are targeted to reduce nutrient pollution while also improving the social and economic conditions of farming communities

The following activities have been designed to promote environmental measures at farm level:

• Improve living conditions in rural areas through the sustainable and economically viable use of natural resources;
• Raise awareness of environmental issues among farmers and local communities, through training for farmers on sustainable farm management, and for the local authorities on how to address pollution from diffuse sources;
• Strengthen and harmonise the capacity to monitor pollution from rural areas, thus providing increased knowledge about the impacts of nutrient losses from farms on the sea.

The BSRP will also develop mechanisms for investments in environmental measures at farm level by offering farmers in environmentally sensitive areas access to the BSRP Agri-environment Credit Scheme (AgECS). The AgECS trains farmers to prepare environmental management plans, and also offers grants for investments in proper manure storage and spreading. The scheme also provides for nutrient balance calculations to monitor the impacts of environmental investments. Investments need to produce a verifiable environmental benefit and to help farms comply with the GAP-codes as defined by the European Commission.

Successful implementation of the project activities can lead to significant reductions in nitrogen losses. At farm level, construction of manure storage can lead to reductions in nitrogen discharges of 25-50 %, the use of catch crops or spring ploughing can lead to reductions of 10-30 %, and manure spreading in springtime can cut discharges by 5-10 %.

We should not forget the extent of the issue of eutrophication as it is not only a matter of curbing inputs from land-based activities, such as agriculture, and the issue who is the one to pay for it, but also a matter of assessing and evaluating the cost of the impacts that eutrophication has on for example coastal fisheries, and coastal amenities, such as recreation.

Drawing up a Baltic Action Plan-including management of nutrient inputs

The over-enrichment of the Baltic Sea by nutrients - the process known as eutrophication - has several effects on the Baltic Sea ecosystems as well as on our possibility to use and enjoy our sea. Amid direct and indirect effects are intensive plankton blooms, reduced water clarity, replacement of permanent littoral vegetation with annual vegetation, with reduced maximum growth depth, followed by effects on fish fauna and maybe worst: oxygen deficiencies in the sea bottom.

For this reason, an important corner stone in HELCOM’s work is to reduce human induced eutrophication to desirable levels, which naturally raises the next question: “What are desirable levels?”

Well, in an attempt to define these levels, HELCOM is presently developing sub-regional background values for the open seas of the Baltic – keeping in mind the need for close coordination and cooperation with similar work undertaken for coastal waters under the EU Water Framework Directive. We all know that it is not possible to turn time back: we will never have a Baltic Sea of 1800’s. However, when we know these background values that result from natural processes, we can use them as reference for high ecological status. Based on that, we will be able to come up with target levels, a definition of a minimum desirable status of our sea – the sea with good ecological status, the sea with diverse biological components functioning in balance, the sea which is supporting a wide range of sustainable economic and social activities. These target values are going to be the corner stones in the development of a joint Baltic Action Plan, which shall for a defined eco-region as the Baltic, lay out the borders for the future needed management measures.

Having determined a good status of our sea – we need to address the pressures and driving forces behind the problems and, in case of eutrophication, define the levels of nutrient inputs which are not harmful for the marine ecosystem. This requires that we link the nutrient loads from activities carried out at land, such as agriculture. HELCOM will evaluate priorities for actions by linking catchment input models and airborne nitrogen deposition models to environmental effect models, thereby forecasting and predicting the effects of various reductions in inputs to the status of the sea.

With the knowledge that agricultural inputs are one of the most significant contributors of waterborne nutrients to the Baltic Sea, HELCOM will elaborate a thematic assessment report dealing with “Eutrophication – with main focus on inputs from agriculture”. The main objective of this assessment will be to evaluate the consequences of the different agricultural policies of the nine Baltic Coastal countries, and, on the basis of this evaluation, to give a joint input to the mid-term revision of the EU Common Agricultural Policy in 2009.

But if we really want to be successful and want our HELCOM requirements and modelling results to be implemented, then we need to have a wider dialogue with the agricultural sector. We are seeking high input from the farmers. The Baltic Sea Regional Project is already taking a step in this direction, but knowing also all too well that the project will not reach all farmers in the Baltic region, HELCOM is stressing the importance of working together with the agricultural producers organisations in all the nine HELCOM Baltic Coastal countries as well as the Baltic-wide represented Baltic Environmental Farmers Forum, which also participates as an observer in HELCOM’s meetings. In order to achieve sustainable agricultural development and at the same time ensure the health of the Baltic Sea we must have at the end the same vision and goals. This requires a different approach - instead of a top-down steering, we need to work hand in hand to find effective ways to prevent further damage to the Baltic Sea. We in HELCOM are looking forward to an open and constructive dialogue with the farmers.

Anne Christine Brusendorff, Executive Secretary of the Helsinki Commission

4. Water protection in Finnish agriculture

The coastal states around the Gulf of Finland have engaged in active cooperation to improve the state of the Baltic Sea already since the 1970s. The Convention on the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area (Helsinki Convention) entered into force in 1980. By this Convention nine states bordering the Baltic Sea and the European Union committed to reducing the loading from all sources, protecting the marine nature and maintaining species biodiversity. The measures for agriculture are included in the Annex on Agriculture to the Helsinki Convention. The Convention led to the establishment of the Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission (Helsinki Commission, HELCOM), whose main task is to monitor and promote the obligations laid down in the Convention.

To reduce and prevent the eutrophication of waters, the Finnish Government issued a Resolution on the third Target Programme for Water Protection in spring 1998. According to the Target Programme, the amount of phosphorus and nitrogen ending up in inland waters and the Baltic Sea from arable farming should be reduced by 50% from the estimated average level in 1990-1993 by the year 2005. The actions taken under the Target Programme should reduce the loading caused by livestock farming by 85% by 2005. However, in the mid-term evaluation of the Target Programme in 2002 it became evident that reaching the levels set as the objective in the Programme cannot be reached in 2005.

In 2002 the Government issued a Resolution on action for the conservation of the Baltic Sea ("Finland's Baltic Sea Protection Programme"), which aims, among other things, to reduce the eutrophication of the Baltic Sea and improve the state of the nature and waters in the region. To reach the reduction targets of the Baltic Sea Protection Programme, measures promoting the removal of nutrients must be increased and these must be targeted at the relevant geographic regions. The Programme lists over 30 means to reach the objectives, and the Resolution calls for action in the next 10-15 years, both in Finland and in the neighbouring regions.

In Finland the non-point source pollution from agriculture is by far the greatest single source of both nitrogen and nutrient loading. Farming accounts for about 35 % of the total nitrogen and 50 % of the phosphorus loading caused by human action. The amount of loading and its variation from one year and season to another also depend on the climate conditions, especially precipitation and temperature. Of the factors relating to cultivation the most significant ones are plant cover, tillage method, fertilisation practices, use of animal manure and factors influencing the structure and hydrology of the soil. The extent of leaching is influenced by the soil structure and perviousness of the soil as well as slope of the site and tillage technique. In particular, the slope and tillage have impacts on erosion and the leaching of nutrients through erosion.

The agri-environmental scheme part-financed by the EU is the main instrument for reducing the nutrient loading from agriculture. Agri-environmental support aims to reduce the loading of the environment, especially surface waters and groundwater and the air, through more efficient utilisation of plant nutrients, reducing the risks due to the use of pesticides, care for the biological diversity and animal and plant species and management of farming landscapes. Environmental support compensates the farmers for the costs and income losses caused by environmental and landscape management measures. Most of the environmental support is used for the mandatory basic and additional measures. These measures concern, among other things, reducing the fertilisation level, management of filter strips, reduced tillage, plant cover during winter, and treatment of wastewater from milking rooms. Farmers may also conclude five or ten year special support contracts concerning e.g. the establishment and management of wetlands, sedimentation ponds and riparian zones. Today the environmental support scheme covers about 94 % of the Finnish active farms and 98 % of the arable area.

Because of the climate and soil conditions, most of the Finnish agriculture is located in the southern parts of the country. Agricultural land represents only about 8 % of the total surface area of Finland, but in many watercourse regions in southern and south-western Finland the share of agricultural land is over 30 %, which means that the loading is also very strongly concentrated in these regions. Efficient targeting of water protection measures, taking account of the conditions in each region, is very important to reach the optimal results in terms of the environment. The possibilities for regional differentiation of environmental support will be considered in the planning of the environmental support scheme of the next programming period 2007-2013. However, the implementation of such scheme would involve heavier administrative burden due to the bureaucracy needed and increasingly complex control.

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) of the European Parliament and of the Council, which entered into force in 2000, imposed new challenges to water protection. The overall objective of the Water Framework Directive is to achieve a good ecological status for all waters in Europe by the end of 2015. Given the past improvements in reducing point source pollution, the emphasis of the WFD will be on minimizing non-point source pollution, which will cause additional challenges for agriculture. According to the Directive, environmental quality objectives, water management plans and programmes of measures are to be pursued at the scale of river catchment areas. By setting up water management at the river basin level, a more holistic and territorially integrated approach related to water is encouraged. This approach requires close cooperation between all actors in the area, including farmers.

Tarja Haaranen, Senior Officer, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in Finland

5. Into a third period of the Finnish Agri-environmental Programme – can we turn the good development into a success story?

Still work to do after two periods of Agri-environmental Programme

A goal of 30-40 % reduction in nutrient losses (P and N) from farm land was set for the second period of the Finnish Agri-environmental Programme (FAEP), runnig over the years 2000-2006. As judged by the follow-up of the FAEP and other monitoring work, we are far behind that goal. Even though a declining trend in flow-normalised P and N transport has been reported for some rivers discharging to the Baltic Sea, nutrient transport from small agricultural basins usually show no trends at all. Chemical and trophic status of the surface waters that are most impacted by agricultural inputs of nutrients is in rare cases good but mostly classified as ”satisfactory”; it is in these areas where successful implementation of the FAEP would be the key to good water quality.

Even though the high expectations of the two FAEP periods haven’t been fullfilled, development during the program periods has been in the right direction. Most important, P and N surpluses in agriculture have markedly declined during the last 15 years (Fig. 1). Annual P surpluses have decreased from 30 kg/ha in early 1990’s to as low as 10 kg/ha. At the same period, N surpluses were reduced from 90 kg/ha to about 50 kg/ha. Wegetated buffers along the waterways have been established to curb erosion and nutrient losses (the area covered by them is about 5000 ha), and locally maintainance of traditional biotopes and extensification of farming have probably also decreased nutrient losses into waterways.

Fig-1

Fig. 1. Averaged over whole of Finland, phosphorus (red line) and nitrogen (green line) balances, i.e., nutrient inputs as manure and fertilisers less nutrients in harvested and sold products. Data: Riitta Lemola, MTT.

Why hasn’t the good development turned into better water quality?

Reasons behind the modest results so far are several. First, soils strongly buffer the changes in nutrient concentrations of soil solution, whereby also nutrient concentration in run-off water very slowly changes after a change in nutrient inputs. This lag period is especially long for phosphorus, and we can’t wait any big turns in P losses as far as nutrient balances show larger surpluses than a few kilograms per hectare. Second, nutrient transport and erosion are intimately coupled with climatic patterns: nutrient losses are greater during mild, rainy winters as compared to cold winters. In the south of Finland, mild and rainy winters have been many during the last ten years. Third, a structural change in agriculture has promoted growth in size of production units, more specialised production, and an increasing amount of rental land. Farmers of rental land are not very willing to make the basic improvements, such as renewing pipe drainage in time, with increased surface runoff and erosion with associated nutrients as a result. In areas that have specialised in livestock production, import of grain and other feed tends to increase the surpluses of regional, as well as, farm-level nutrient balances. Sooner or later surplus balances leads to creation of localised areas of nutrient accumulation, sometimes referred to as ”hot-spot areas” or ”critical source areas”.

Even small hot-spot areas may produce a large proportion of the nutrient losses from a watershed. As example, this has been shown to hold true for the about 200 ha catchment of Lake Rehtijärvi (Jokioinen, SW Finland). Shown in the associated map (Fig. 2) is the distribution of soil test P content of the agricultural soils of the of the Lake Rehtijärvi catchment. In this catchment, about 50% of the loading of dissolved P comes from the fields marked with red and pink dots in the map, equivalent to ”high” and ”excessive” P status. These soils only make up less than 15 % of the field area. Further, about 5 ha of heavily manured and fertilized land produces equal loading of dissolved P as the 75 ha of fields with low P status (grey dots in the map). The areas in the both ends of the lake, with abundant pink dots, are fields where farm-yard manure has been applied for decades around a cowshed (in the NW end of the lake) or, the pink dots in the SE end of the lake, are located around a horse stable, walking yards for horses being included.

Fig-2

Fig. 2. Soil test P (acid ammonium acetate-extractable P) distribution across the Lake Rehtijärvi watershed. Data and map: Håkan Jansson and Aaro Närvänen, MTT.

How could we make the most use of the funds directed to agricultural water protection?

As we enter into the third FAEP period, expectations and demands on decreasing nutrient losses from agriculture will be greater than ever. A need for a marked decrease in nutrient inputs to waterways will be spelled out when the implementation work of the Water Framework Directive seriously starts off, and as a result of the recent discussions on the future water quality trends of the Baltic Sea. To make things more challenging, the easy part of the water protection work has already been done, as direct leaching of nutrients has been taken care of, and we now should be able to decrease nutrient concentrations in the more dilute flows.

For increased efficiency of the FAEP, different regions have to focus on the major problems in a particular area. In the scale of whole Finland, the areas with abundant erosion-prone fine-textured soils, e.g. SW Finland, generally need more plant cover during the winter periods, and this plant cover should be perennial. In the more coarse-textured soils and areas with intensive animal husbandry, for example in the Ostrobothnian region, special attention should be paid to the nutrient balances, to prevent build-up of hot-spot areas of nutrient leaching. To effectively manage the excisting areas with high nutrient concentrations, new methods for rapid binding of nutrients in soils, or stripping them from run-off waters, should be developed and put into practice.

Also, integration of farm- and catchment-scale management plans is needed. In the catchment scale, special attention is to be directed to the areas with high nutrient concentrations. In catchments like that of the Lake Rehtijärvi, remediation actions should be required in the few hectares that make the hot-spot areas. However, most fields of the lake Rehtijärvi catchment would need no other actions but implementation of normal good agricultural practices. In the farm-scale, and especially when P is concerned, the only sustainable way of managing a farm is to balance nutrient inputs to the plant uptake of nutrients in all fields. After that, the most erosion-prone fields should be paid special attention to minimise soil losses.

Finally, we must remember that agricultural water protection measures will only succeed if they are implemented on fields with good soil structure and a working drainage system. Soils where roots are not able to penetrate to deeper horizons due to excessive water (poor drainage) or compacted subsoil, always leak much of the added nutrients to the environment by leaching and as a result of erosion.

Risto Uusitalo, MTT Agrifood Research Finland