The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has repeatedly called on Teagasc to share data on farming activities, as it is unable to identify whether improvements in water quality can be linked to agricultural practices happening on the ground.
The EPA is responsible for implementing the National Water Quality Monitoring Programme and uses the monitoring data to report on water quality, and to assess what pressures and activities are impacting on water quality.
Under the Agricultural Sustainability Support and Advisory Programme (ASSAP), reports on the recommendations made by Teagasc and dairy co-op advisors to farmers on how to improve water quality are provided to the EPA.
ASSAP
There are currently 50 ASSAP advisors between Teagasc and the dairy co-ops who assess farms in Priority Areas for Action (PAA) based on referrals received from the Local Authority Waters Programme (LAWPRO).
The referrals are based on scientific assessment of the river and identification of locations on the river where agriculture is impacting water quality. The service ASSAP provides to farmers is “free, voluntary and confidential”, Teagasc said.
Based on these referrals, ASSAP advisors then visit farms in the relevant area and record the issues identified and make recommendations on actions to the farmer to mitigate the issues.
After a period of time, advisors then may re-visit or communicate with the farm to establish the level of implementation of the measures. All this information is recorded on the Ag Planner system, Teagasc told Agriland.
Ag Planner is a digital tool developed by Teagasc and used by ASSAP advisors to assign mitigation measures to the issues identified on a farm. The advisor can then generate a bespoke, detailed plan for a farmer.
Currently, 20 Teagasc ASSAP advisors are using Ag Planner. Teagasc said it is working towards extending this to the 30 co-op advisors, and that the system can capture the “good work” being done by farmers to improve water quality.
Water quality data
It is then required under ASSAP to report the progress made in a PAA to the EPA’s online web portal, Environmental Data Exchange Network (EDEN), after farmers have been given a period of time to implement the measures, Teagasc said.
ASSAP provides an anonymised report for each referral, containing information on the number of farms visited, issues identified, measures recommended and the level of implementation. No individual farmer can be identified.
This information is currently shared in a PDF format through which it is possible to link the measures implemented to address issues identified by LAWPRO at referral level, based on the referral identification number, Teagasc said.
“On full rollout of the Ag-Planner system to all ASSAP advisors (Teagasc and co-op), Teagasc will have a full database of recommended actions from all ASSAP advisors and information on implementation of measures.
“At that point, it will be possible to give access on an anonymised basis to raw data on measure implementation to EPA to facilitate analysis.
“This will be contingent on the data sharing agreements which will require that the data be used exclusively for research purposes and with all GDPR [General Data Protection Regulations] provisions in place,” Teagasc said.
In a recent statement provided to Agriland, the agency said: “The EPA incorporates the latest research findings from Teagasc into our assessments of the pressures.
“The EPA has highlighted that there is a data gap in relation to capturing what changes in farm practice have been implemented and where, so that these can be related to water quality improvements in an evidence-based way.”
While the EPA is provided with ASSAP reports, it said that “further information would be needed on what actions farmers have actually implemented to allow an assessment to be made of the impacts of those actions on water quality”.
Teagasc said the EPA “should incorporate” data from its Agricultural Catchments Programme under which the Timoleague, Dunlee, Cregduff, Corduff-Sreenty, Castledockrell, and Ballycanew catchments are monitored every 10 minutes since 2008.
The EPA did not comment on Teagasc’s Agricultural Catchments Programme.