Catchment-Sensitive Farming: Tackling Diffuse Water Pollution from Agriculture in England —Policies and Drivers - Water and Agriculture: Sustainability, Markets and Policies - page 260

Agricultural industry brings many benefits to society, not least of which is food
production, but also through positive effects on habitat and species, and on landscape.
However, there is also a negative cost of agricultural production — namely impacts on
the environment. Agriculture contributes to carbon dioxide emissions (primarily through
the use of fossil fuels and electricity, as in other sectors) and accounts for over 40% of
methane and nearly 66% of nitrous oxide emissions in the UK. Intensive farming of
monoculture has resulted in losses in biodiversity and impacts on the water quality of UK
rivers, lakes and ground water. In the UK it is estimated that 60% of the nitrogen load in
surface waters comes from agriculture (WRc 2004) and 43% of the phosphorus (Morse et
al. 1993). Everyday activities such as the tillage and ploughing of land, the spreading of
slurries and farmyard manures (FYM), use of pesticides, veterinary medicines and
fertilisers can all give rise to the inadvertent contamination of water supplies. Agriculture
uses large amounts of inorganic nitrogen (N), phosphate (P) and potassium (K) fertilisers.

The value of the impact of agriculture on the environment

The costs of natural resource degradation and environmental pollution due to
agriculture in the UK, both in monetary and environmental terms, are difficult to quantify
precisely. However estimates have been made on the total cost of the problem and
agriculture's contribution to it (Table 1).

Table 1. Costs of agriculture in England and Wales in £ million per year 2004-05 prices
(adapted from EA [2002]) 1

Environmental impact Lower bound Upper bound

Nutrients in lakes 20 34

Recreation damage 10 24

Fisheries (freshwater angling) 14 37

Bathing water 23 44

Amenity loss (property prices) 5 5

Groundwater (costs to water companies) 94 94

Ecosystem (river) damage 156 389

Total 322 627

1. The Environment Agency report (2002) estimated the costs of natural resource degradation and environmental pollution due
to agriculture in the UK by estimating the total cost of the problem and agriculture's contribution to each problem. These
estimates have been updated using analysis done by the Environment Agency in the context of the periodic review of the
water industry in 2004, and using figures from Defra's Framework for Environmental Accounts for Agriculture (Defra 2004). A
range of estimates exists because of uncertainty as to both the value of total damage and the share of the damage that stems
from agriculture. The methodology is acknowledged to be simplistic, and therefore the resulting estimates are indicative.
However, it should also be noted that values were not estimated for all impacts, so the quantification of agriculture's
contribution is likely to be conservative.