Straitjacket from head to toe
Publication of the European Commission's proposal for a Soil Protection Strategy is expected in November.
Never mind that there is already a wide range of EU agricultural and environmental measures for soil protection; Brussels sees a need for additional legislation.
The Water Framework Directive (WFD), the EU Flood Action Programme, the Pesticide Strategy, the Air Quality Strategy, the Climate Change Programme, the Biodiversity Strategy and the 2003 Common Agricultural Policy reform already protect the soils of Europe.
In order to receive their direct payments, European farmers are already required to keep their soils in good environmental condition, which includes protecting soil from erosion, maintaining high soil organic matter levels and good soil structure and avoiding the deterioration of habitats on farmland.
Never mind that damaging the soils they depend on for their living is the last thing on farmers' minds.
Never mind that the ink is hardly dry on CAP decoupling, cross-compliance, the new farm advisory system, and the new Rural Development Regulation - all of which include soil protection measures.
Even before farmers get to grips with this raft of new policies, incentives and legislation, Brussels obsessively seeks to load more regulations on their backs.
Why they should do this now is anybody's guess, at a time of significant improvements in farming practices, with decreasing use of pesticides, better crop rotations, and better soil cover, due to last year's CAP decoupling.
Farmers can only hope that eurocrats will not hold them responsible for factors beyond their control, such as urbanisation, climate change, flooding and air quality. Sealing of soil surfaces due to increased urbanisation and new infrastructures is the main cause of soil degradation in western and northern Europe - not farming.
Farmers can only hope that the legislators will take into account the enormous variability of soils across Europe.
However, anyone examining the Animal Remedies Regulations which Ireland must enact before the end of October could not be hopeful of a sensible approach in Brussels.
There is widespread opposition to proposed regulations to allow animal remedies by prescription only, and to even ban technical information and advertising media coverage.
When Agriculture and Food Minister Mary Coughlan shortly appears before the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture and Food to explain the legal, food safety and animal health grounds for the new rules, Committee members should bear in mind that Brussels wants to regulate not only medicines for farm animals, but also the soil they walk on, their passports, their welfare, their movement, their transport, the air they breathe, the water they drink, the diseases they get, their horns, their feed, their milk yield, their effluent and the methane gases they belch.
