The industry occupies quality arable land and construction on a green field threatens the food self-sufficiency of the state. This myth is no longer dispelled not only by the statistics of the Agricultural Union, according to which in the Czech Republic since 1999, only units of percent of the land have been converted into industrial areas. A new study by the Faculty of the Environment of the Czech University of Agriculture. The study, carried out on agricultural land near Panattoni Park Stříbro, focused on organic pollutants and metals at the site. The results of the study confirm that the surrounding soil is unsuitable for growing agricultural crops for food and as feed for livestock, due to the immediate vicinity of the D5 motorway. The study was commissioned by Panattoni, an industrial zone builder who specializes in sustainable development. In the following period, it is considering the elaboration of similar studies in other localities.
It was not until 2001 that lead-based fuels were banned in the Czech Republic. At that time, the country had just over 750 km of motorways, in the immediate vicinity of which, before this ban, there was almost 225,000,000 sqm of land exposed to the fall of lead particles produced by motor vehicles. There were 5,000 km of first class roads in the Czech Republic, around which there are more than 1.6 billion sqm of lead-affected land. The aim of the study of the Faculty of the Environment of the Czech University of Agriculture was to analyze the concentrations of organic pollutants and metals on the example of the locality Panattoni Park Stříbro.
In professional and public discussions on the occupation of arable land for commercial and industrial operations, the one-sided view prevails today that any use of sites in the cadastres as agricultural land is undesirable, unacceptable and harmful. However, as the results of this scientific study show, the historical classification of land as agricultural, even in cases close to busy roads, does not take into account their current usability for rational crop cultivation.
“The research report has two key conclusions: agricultural land around the highway is facing a lead concentration that exceeds safety limits many times over, and although the load is decreasing with increasing distance, it is spreading over the surrounding landscape due to elevated road terrain. The analysis of the wheat and oilseed rape currently grown here showed above-limit values compared to the current European standards for both lead and cadmium and arsenic. Therefore, these crops cannot serve as food or feed, “explains Vladislav Chrastný, professor at the Faculty of the Environment.
“This historical environmental burden needs to be taken into account in the ongoing debate on the withdrawal of land from the agricultural land fund. Arguing food self-sufficiency is not relevant. Biomass overproduction for biofuels further burdens the soil with arsenic from fertilizers. In addition, modern industrial buildings with exemplary rainwater management can be used to accumulate and infiltrate water to protect adjacent agricultural land away from erosion roads,” says Pavel Sovička, Panattoni’s General Manager for the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
The site examined in the scientific study is located in the cadastre of the village of Ostrov u Stříbra at exit 107 on the busy D5 motorway near large-capacity storage facilities. Here, for the purposes of the research, agricultural land sown on the side closer to the road with rapeseed oil was selected, and on the more remote area then winter wheat. In order to be able to perform a thorough analysis with a true informative value, three sampling points were identified in the given locality – the first at a distance of about 10 meters from the edge of the road, the second at a distance of 50 m and a reference point at a distance of 400 meters. Three soil probes were performed at each sampling point, additional samples to determine the range of road traffic were then taken in a transect (slice) every 20 meters, the last sample was taken at a distance of 300 meters from the edge of the D5 motorway.
The vast majority of the many dozens of analyzed organic pollutants have shown that their concentrations are below the limit, within the permissible levels given by current legislation. Both for lower, preventive and higher, indication values, exceeding which may already endanger animal and human health. This is in line with the conclusions from previous studies in the scientific literature – ie that in the immediate vicinity of busy roads, the surrounding soils are far more negatively affected by runoff from the road surface and rainwater runoff than by current traffic. But at the same time I find that contaminants from the exhaust gases can get through the atmospheric aerosol further from the place of emission, for example, hundreds of meters. The data resulting from this study show that 400 m is a demonstrably “safe” distance beyond which significant deposition of pollutants no longer occurs. At the same time, the terrain character of this sampling point with the D5 motorway, elevated above the surrounding terrain without any surrounding tree barrier, represents a worse scenario for the spread of contaminants than vice versa.
However, this does not mean that agricultural land close to busy roads (and specifically to this) is automatically completely safe and suitable.
for the production of agricultural crops. On the contrary, the analysis of soil samples in the field of metals shows that lead (Pb) contamination at a distance of 10 to 50 m from the D5 below the topsoil reaches over 500 mg / kg and only at a distance of 400 m from the highway decreases more than 10 times. Just in the case of Pb, it is most likely an old environmental burden where tetraethyl (TEL) and tetramethyl plumban (TML) were added to fuels as an anti-knock agent. However, elevated values have also been detected in cadmium and astatine, which occur in fossil fuels but in such low concentrations that their increased content in agricultural soils is far more likely due to the use of fertilizers.
The most fundamental results of the research report are thus essentially two – firstly, the overload limit of agricultural land around motorways, when the analysis of oilseed rape and winter wheat currently grown here showed above-limit values for both Pb and Cd and As compared to current European standards. Therefore, the local crops cannot serve as food or feed. Secondly, it is a pollutant load that decreases with distance from the edge of the motorway, but it is in this area that due to the elevated terrain above the surrounding landscape, it spreads to much greater distances because there is no physical barrier – for example in the form of new tree alleys. increase to the appropriate height would take decades) or in the form of new buildings directly on the incriminated highway.
The question therefore arises as to whether the backbone roads will stick to the preservation of agricultural land and whether they should not grow biomass for first-generation biofuels on them, for which the Czech Republic has a complete overproduction. The myth of reducing the food self-sufficiency of our republic by the development of industry around motorways has certainly not been confirmed.
In its development projects, Panattoni focuses not only on ensuring that its new industrial buildings have the lowest possible burden on the environment, but also on their most suitable location in terms of logistics and the shortest connection of service transport to major roads, as this is the most important element in the end. to significantly minimize negative environmental impacts.
