There’s an item this month on Nitrates regulations – funnily nitrates is also a subject which agitates Tony Juniper. When talking about soil he says: For example, more than 90 per cent of our food is grown in soil, yet a third of the world’s farmed soil has been degraded since the 1950s due to bad agricultural practices.
The response is to try and drive more production by adding nitrates and other chemicals, additional inputs that carry a financial cost. But this in turn also delivers a downstream cost, with Europe spending about €70 billion a year dealing with nitrogen pollution, says Juniper.
That €70bn sounds like a lot – maybe it is time for another look at how we do things?
