Fertilisers: Ammonia

(asked on 30th November 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will take steps to notify and encourage farmers and agronomists to respond to the consultation on reducing ammonia emissions from urea fertilisers; and if he will make a statement.


Answered by
Rebecca Pow Portrait
Rebecca Pow
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This question was answered on 3rd December 2020

The consultation on reducing ammonia emissions from solid urea fertilisers was published on the GOV.UK website on 3 November 2020 and runs until 26 January 2021.

Defra issued a press release announcing the consultation launch to national, trade and regional media and covered the news on the Defra in the Media blog. The news was covered in key farming trade journals in early November - Farmers Guardian and Farmers Weekly. I was also interviewed on Farming Today on 23 November to further encourage participation in the consultation.

We also posted an explainer video across Defra's Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Our content to launch the consultation gained a total of 80,200 impressions, 24,500 video views, and 2,400 engagements, which included 350 clicks to the consultation webpage.

Further communications activity is planned for January ahead of the consultation closing to remind would-be respondents the deadline is approaching. Finally, we will be holding a series of stakeholder workshops over December and January to ensure we get responses to our consultation on urea fertilisers from those that might be affected most. This will include a separate workshop with farmers, agronomists and other users of solid urea fertilisers planned for later this month.

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