© 2008-9 Land Network International Ltd
Putting composts made from wastes to local land has a number of benefits:
- it reduces tonne truck miles by between 65 and 85%;
- it moves the farms towards eliminating the use of mineral fertilisers and eliminating the pollution of groundwater with nitrates and phosphates (we can prove that we eliminate the pollution of groundwater);
- there will be a marginal reduction of crop diseases; maybe in excess of 20% less use of crop protection chemicals although it will take 3-5 years to get there;
- we would expect to reduce power inputs by 20-25% within 3-5 years;
- it will dramatically reduce soil erosion and flood risk.
Despite these advantages, there is a large bulk of material to be handled and we live in a highly regulated society. “Central Support” in Land Network does nearly all the paperwork whilst the farm does the physical work and runs the site.
There is potentially somewhere in the region of 100 -150 million tonnes of waste that could, every year, come in to farming in the UK. This would attract gate fees of something between £2 and £3 billion, every year. It would also wipe out in excess of £2.4 billion that farmers spend on mineral fertilisers every year. It would be moving the farms in the direction of “going organic” and produce food which is safe and there is also at least some evidence to show that people living off that food would have less disease and live longer. Yet it doesn’t really alter farming; before mineral fertilisers became mass produced, farming made fertilisers by recycling “wastes” which were locally produced.
