PEMBROKESHIRE’S capacity to produce food will be severely harmed if the Welsh Government presses ahead with controls to limit farmland nitrate inputs.

Dairy farmers Jeffrey and Elinor Evans say they will have to reduce their stocking rate next year if their farm at Wolfscastle is designated as a Nitrate Vulnerable Zone (NVZ).

The Evans’s milk 170 spring calving cows at 80-acre Broadmoor Farm. In addition to this Pembrokeshire County Council holding, they rent a further 20 acres from the council and 300 acres privately.

Their farm is one of around 2,000 holdings in Pembrokeshire that would have to limit inputs of nitrogen and slurry and restrict when those inputs are applied.

“We are very tightly stocked because we import feed from the offlying land,’’ says Mr Evans, vice county chairman of NFU Cymru in Pembrokeshire.

The Welsh government has set out plans to adopt either a “whole territory” approach, a policy already in place in Northern Ireland and which would see the whole of Wales become an NVZ – or a targeted approach, which would increase the area of land designated from 2.4% to 8%.

Mr Evans, who has been a tenant at Broadmoor Farm for 15 years, said not only would he need to scale down his system if his farm was drawn into an NVZ but there would be wider implications for the local economy. “With so many farms affected, the output of Pembrokeshire will be hugely reduced. Production is under threat,’’ he predicts. “This could affect businesses like First Milk and Puffin Produce who source milk and potatoes produced in Pembrokeshire and there would also be a knock on effect on the wider circle of suppliers who sell to the farms in the proposed NVZ.’’

Grassland farmers would have application limits of 250kg/hectare of nitrogen while for arable producers that limit would be 170kg/hectare. Farmers who fall foul of the regulations would have money deducted from their Basic Payment through cross compliance.

Mr Evans predicts that a closed period for application – from October 1-February 15 – would have a detrimental impact on agricultural contractors whose work would be concentrated into a much shorter period. He also believes it could lead to a spike in nitrate levels when application is permitted – and cause odour issues which in turn could impact on tourism.

Mr Evans calculates that he would need to invest up to £80,000 upgrading his 69,000-gallon underground slurry store to comply with the closed spreading periods.

NFU Cymru insists there are big gaps in the evidence Welsh government is relying on to justify the NVZ proposals.

Peter Howells, NFU Cymru farm policy adviser, said the data had to stand up to scrutiny. “There is no evidence that there is a problem with nitrate levels in Wales. Two per cent of farmland in Wales is designated an NVZ but the Welsh government has little or no evidence that applying this principle to large parts of Wales or indeed to the whole of Wales is giong to make a difference. It is a blunt policy instrument.’’

Mr Howells urged farmers to respond to the Welsh government consultation before it closed on December 23.