In brief....
The acting chair of the Environment Agency, Emma Howard Boyd, has been down on the farm in Suffolk to hear about local water security challenges for growers and the food supply industry, and how they can be addressed by abstraction reform
The NFU joined with the East Suffolk abstractor group ESWAG last week in welcoming Environment Agency acting chair Emma Howard Boyd onto James Foskett's Suffolk farm to discuss local abstraction issues, abstraction reform and the need for water security for local farm businesses.
Host farmer James Foskett, who has demonstrated his long term commitment to vegetable growing by making significant capital investment in state of the art crop storage facilities, describes access to a secure supply of water as the top priority for his business.
Looking ahead to abstraction reform, James said that his use of water is highly variable with abstracted volumes in any year depending on weather and growing conditions. He said that ESWAG members want an abstraction licensing system that recognises and accommodates erratic water use.
With only 10% of surface water in East Suffolk currently abstracted for reservoir storage, there was general agreement that ways must be found to support and encourage farmers to construct more winter storage.
Emma Howard Boyd explained that abstraction reform is being driven by the challenge of how to manage less available water in the future and she showed great interest in how the NFU and ESWAG might engage with the food supply chain on long term business and investment planning to, for example, increase reservoir capacity.
Paul Hammett, NFU national water resources specialist, said that current reviews of time limited licences are focusing on the unused volume headroom available in licences. Growers increasingly fear that their unused ‘headroom’ will be clawed back if they don’t use it, but these are usually emergency volumes held back for use in dry and drought years.
Emma Howard Boyd is acting chair of the Environment Agency’s national board, a position which should be made permanent once she has been interviewed by the EFRA Committee in September 2016.