Rural Affairs

Nitrate Sensitive Areas

Description

The Nitrate Sensitive Areas (NSA) Scheme operated in 32 selected areas in England (predominantly in Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and the West Midlands) under the EC agri-environment measures. The Scheme was voluntary and compensated farmers for 5 year undertakings to significantly change their farming practices to help reduce nitrate pollution of supplies of drinking water. The 32 Nitrate Sensitive Areas, including 10 former Pilot areas originally designated in 1990, covered approximately 35,000 hectares of eligible agricultural land.

The Scheme was closed to further new entrants in 1998 following the Government’s Comprehensive Spending Review, although existing agreements continued for their full term.

All the NSAs fell within the areas designated as Nitrate Vulnerable Zones (NVZs) in 1996 under the EC Nitrate Directive (91/676/EEC). Farmers in NVZs are required to comply with mandatory Action Programme measures designed to protect both groundwaters and surface waters against pollution caused by nitrate from agriculture.

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Objectives

The aim of the NSA Scheme was to help reduce or stabilise high and/or rising nitrate levels in key sources of public water supplies, through voluntary changes to farming activity. These went well beyond good agricultural practice, thereby helping to ensure that the abstracted water meets the 50 mg/litre limit for nitrate laid down in the EC Drinking Water Directive (80/778/EEC). NSA Scheme requirements were quite separate from the mandatory Action Programme measures introduced under the EC Nitrate Directive (91/676/EEC), and which came into force in NVZs on 19 December 1998. The NVZ measures, which restrict the quantity and timing of applications of nitrogen fertilisers and livestock manures, largely equate to good agricultural practice and are therefore uncompensated.

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How the Scheme Operates

The Scheme offered farmers three different types of voluntary measures, involving substantial changes in farming practices, to reduce nitrate leaching losses from their land. These were:

Premium Arable Scheme (PSA)

Conversion of arable land to extensive grass under one of the following management systems:

  • PAS Option A – unfertilised, ungrazed grassland
  • PAS Option B – unfertilised, ungrazed grassland with a species-rich native seed mixture
  • PAS Option C - unfertilised grass with optional grazing
  • PAS Option D - grassland receiving up to 150 kg/ha/year of nitrogen, with optional grazing
  • PAS Option E – unfertilised, ungrazed grassland with woodland (former Pilot scheme Option D land only)
  • PAS Option S (NSA Set-aside) - As Option B, but farmers may count the land towards their AAPS set-aside requirement
Premium Grass Scheme

Extensification of existing intensively managed grassland.

Basic Scheme

Low nitrogen arable cropping, under the following options:

  • Option A (restricted rotation) - up to 150 kg/ha/year of nitrogen, with no potatoes or vegetable brassica crops to be grown
  • Option B (standard rotation) - up to 150 kg/ha/year in four out of five years, with up to 200 kg/ha in the fifth year

Farmers entered their land into the scheme on a field by field basis and gave undertakings lasting for five years. All undertakings included the requirement not to damage, destroy or remove environmental features, such as walls, hedges, trees, lakes, ponds, streams, traditional weatherproof farm buildings and features of historical or archaeological interest on or bordering the land entered into the scheme.

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Payment Rates

Payment rates were based upon the level of income forgone, resulting from compliance with the Scheme rules. The rates were reviewed at 3-yearly intervals and were subject to upward and downward revisions during the life of the Scheme.

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Overall uptake

Final uptake of the scheme exceeded 28,000 hectares or 80% of the eligible land. The total number of participants in the Scheme was 447 out of the 620 farmers with land in NSAs i.e. 72% of those eligible.

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Monitoring, Evaluation and Review

The impact of the Scheme was monitored in three ways:

  1. data on cropping and husbandry practices was collected for each field. A computer model of nitrate leaching was then used to calculate, from this information, estimated nitrate losses;
  2. actual nitrate leaching from the soil zone from a representative sample of fields was measured by means of porous pots; and
  3. nitrate levels in water pumped from the boreholes within NSAs were monitored.

The monitoring programme has demonstrated that the changes to normal agricultural practices made under the Scheme have been successful in reducing nitrate leaching. A report of an economic evaluation of the effects of the Scheme (published in July 1998) is also now available in Portable Document Format (PDF). These documents are marked[Click to download Adobe Acrobat Reader]. To read them you will need a copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is available free of charge.

Click here to download Acrobat Reader Software.

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Further Information

The NSA Scheme was closed to further new entry in 1998 following the Government’s Comprehensive Spending Review, in order to release funds for other priority areas. However, existing NSA agreements continued until the expiry of their five year terms with the last ones terminating in September 2003.

The action programme of statutory measures in Nitrate Vulnerable Zones, within which all NSAs were situated, will continue to play an important role in protecting both groundwaters and surface waters against pollution caused by nitrates from agriculture. The designation of NVZs was extended in December 1998 and now includes 55% of the area of England.

Some areas of NSA grassland have been particularly successful in achieving a wider range of environmental benefits. As NSA agreements terminated, farmers were encouraged to consider the options open to them for retaining such areas, for example, through applying for funding under the Countryside Stewardship Scheme or entering eligible land directly into set-aside under the Arable Area Payments Scheme.

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Page last modified: 19 May, 2005
Page published: 10 December, 2002

Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs