As debates continue this week over the future of the Common Agricultural Policy and whether proposals aimed ensuring the sustainability of the European farming industry will be effective, researchers from Lancaster have suggested policy makers may be overlooking the importance of one feature of the farmed landscape.

The researchers, from Lancaster’s Environment Centre, have suggested that the reintroduction of farm ponds could significantly reduce agricultural pollution in streams and rivers. They said that, whilst at one time every farm would have had a pond, agricultural intensification has meant that many of them have been lost to make way for more farmland, which has had a detrimental effect on the environment.

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Working with farmers in Leicestershire and Cumbria, environmental scientists from the LEC created ten new field wetlands in areas of unproductive farmland such as field corners and buffer strips. The field wetlands, single or paired ponds of varying designs and sizes, have been monitored to measure how much runoff, sediment and nutrients they can trap for over four years.

The researchers found that the wetlands trap carbon and reduce diffuse pollution, which otherwise poses a threat to water quality. Each year in the UK, two million tonnes of topsoil are lost as sediment, a process through which nitrates and phosphates are lost form agricultural land and pollute clean water, threatening wildlife.

However, the Lancaster research showed that ponds offer a simple, cost-effective means of intercepting runoff and protecting other watercourses. In one case, up to 40 tonnes of sediment was trapped in just one year at the project's Whinton Hill site in Cumbria.

Lead Professor John Quinton of the university’s Environment Centre commented on the findings, "Ponds and wetlands have benefits and not only for wildlife; they can also store floodwater and can potentially be used to clean runoff pollutants before they reach downstream rivers and lakes.

"These results suggest that field wetlands can indeed be used to reduce diffuse pollution from agricultural land and we now need to work out how to make them even more effective and to look into the other benefits they can provide."

On some farms, water trapped in small marshy areas may be suitable for dredging and reapplying onto fields, providing both conservation and financial benefits; the researchers are looking into the wider implications of the wetlands study and, with support from the farmers who have collaborated with the project, hope to identify further advantages provided by wetlands.

Although the first phase of the Mitigation Options for Phosphorus and Sediment (MOPS) study is now complete, the trial will continue until next year. The researchers called for bodies of water on farms to be conserved and for expansion to be encouraged; currently there is no legal protection for ponds, despite the biodiversity benefits they offer.

In Brussels, members of the European Parliament this week unveiled their repose to European Commission proposals for Common Agricultural Policy reforms. Conservationists have reacted strongly to the proposals, which they fear risk ‘watering down’ more sustainable aspects outlined in the initial reforms. Industry lobby groups and some MEPs suggested the Commission’s controversial greening measures would be too complicated to implement and focus more on achieving cross-compliance than rewarding food production.

They also questioned the Commission’s plans to render 30 per cent of direct payments dependent on fulfilling a range of environmental criteria. However, if these proposals were weakened or removed, it is unclear how meaningful conservation measures would be incorporated into farm subsidies, which account for around 40 per cent of European public spending, and which experts and the European public both believe must be altered to reflect the pressing need to protect the environment.

The European Environmental Bureau said following the latest round of negotiations that European policy makers demonstrated “that they have no intention of using this round of reform of the CAP to tackle the damaging impacts of European farming” in this week’s negotiations.

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