Following the success of trials earlier this year to cut back on the amount of chemicals applied to the land, the Jersey Royal Company’s technical director, Mike Renouard, says the business intends to reduce the amount of fertilisers it uses by 30 per cent in 2018.
Mr Renouard is heading trials that have seen fertiliser application rates reduce by 12 per cent and a switch to more environmentally friendly fungicides and herbicides [weedkillers] in reservoir water catchment areas.
‘We are really pleased with the results of the first year’s trials, which have gone really well,’ he said.
‘Chemicals that were found in the water supplies in the past are not being used in reservoir catchment areas and we are now using herbicides that are less likely to leach into water,’ he said.
In the first half of 2016 high levels of agricultural chemicals and fertilisers were found in water sources around the Island, forcing the closure of the worst-hit reservoir, Val de la Mare, for five months.
Since then, farmers, Jersey Water and the Environment Department have formed the Cleaner Water Working Group to come up with solutions. Environment is due to release the findings of this year’s water tests later this week.
Jersey Royal has reduced its reliance on fertiliser by using GPS-guided automated equipment to apply a specific amount in the furrows when potatoes are planted, rather than applying it across an entire field, from hedge to hedge.
And instead of the same blanket application of fungicides on the land, a chemical that prevent blemishes on tubers is being applied to individual seed potatoes before planting.
Mr Renouard says the company is planning to roll out these new farming practices across 90 per cent of the 8,300 vergées of land where it intends to grow potatoes next season.
‘We are hoping to make between 20 and 30 per cent savings in nitrate [fertiliser] uses but every season is different, so we have got to conduct trials over a number of seasons to get good results,’ he said. ‘The only land where we can’t apply precision application is on the côtils and the early sloping land, as we can’t use machinery on those fields,’ he said.
The change to more environmentally friendly chemicals that are less likely to leach from the land into water supplies is also being extended from catchment areas for Val de La Mare and Queen’s Valley to includes fields around Handois in St Lawrence.
