New Welsh NVZ rules will hit staff retention, warns contractor

New nitrate vulnerable zone (NVZ) regulations in Wales will leave businesses struggling to retain staff for the three-month closed period for nutrient applications, with major knock-on consequences for silage-making and other operations, a farm contractor has warned.

Lyn Davies operates Davies Brothers from St Clears, Carmarthenshire, where the family-run business employs up to 12 full-time staff.

Slurry and muck spreading is important to the structure of business, enabling it to retain a permanent workforce year-round while drafting in extra drivers for seasonal work.

See also: Analysis: Challenges threaten future of Welsh farming

Mr Davies said the Welsh government’s new Control of Agricultural Pollution Regulations will jeopardise businesses like his because it won’t have work for staff during the closed period for spreading, which comes into force on 1 August 2024.

“We won’t be able to afford to hold onto the drivers for those months, so that will mean they will get jobs elsewhere. So where are we going to get the drivers from when we are allowed to spread slurry, and for silage and other work?

“As it is, we don’t spread slurry when the weather is wet, whether that is in the winter or at any other time of the year, but we depend on slurry work in the winter to keep our drivers in work.”

In common with many contractors, Mr Davies said the business is heavily financed and its insurance costs alone are £72,000 a year.

He suggested that the regulations have been “poorly thought out” by the government and directed his desperation at rural affairs minister Lesley Griffiths.

“How can she sleep at night?” he asked. “Every contracting business is in the same situation, not just ours.”

The new regulations will have economic consequences for rural Wales, he added, and would also have serious repercussions for farmers because the contracting industry will scale back.

“I have a nephew who has come into the business, but where is the incentive for young people like him to stay when the government just keeps heaping more and more regulation on us?”

Welsh government response

In a statement, the Welsh government told Farmers Weekly that it intended to review the regulations shortly and, as part of that, it would “consider the challenges which have been raised by the sector’’.

But it added that the “protection and recovery of the environment and the reputation and long-term sustainability of the sector must be at the forefront of any policy decisions going forward.”

“We remain committed to working with the farming community in the deployment of the Control of Agricultural Pollution Regulations to improve water and air quality, taking an approach targeted at those activities known to cause pollution,” it said.