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Among the items presented in an end of term rush in Brussels this week was a “Soil Monitoring Law”, which has the ambition to reverse the decline in EU soil quality and achieve healthy soils by 2050 (as well as zero emission and zero pollution).
All of these are worthy ambitions; the difficulty arises on charting a route of travel to get there.
In relation to soil health specifically, every farmer in Europe will agree in principle, just as we agree about ambition on human health. Difficulties again arise when it comes to what is required for delivering the ambition.
Cautious welcome
Copa Cogeca, the EU farm organisations' collective body, have given the proposals a cautious welcome.
Unlike many EU initiatives, the Commission on this occasion has avoided the top-down approach that had been used with Farm to Fork and hasn’t set any specific targets.
Member states will be tasked with monitoring and assessing the health of soils in their jurisdiction so that appropriate measures can be taken.
Detail still to come
This is where the proposal remains vague. It talks about appropriate measures, but these have to be defined as is what constitutes soil health.
The Irish Farmers Journal asked IFA’s Brussels director, Liam MacHale, for his interpretation of this and, while supportive of the principle, he wondered if farmers' efforts could be deemed a failure overall if there was a relatively minor non-compliance.
He used the example of a vehicle being correctly classified as in poor condition if the brakes failed, but not so for a broken tail light.
Funding concerns
The other big question that concerned Liam MacHale was funding.
At the launch in Brussels this week, he said the only source of funding mentioned was the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP). This presents two problems.
First, the current CAP, which has just commenced, already has a strong environmental focus and, as Liam explained, outside of Ireland there is a relatively poor take-up of this fund.
High-production German, Danish and Dutch farmers in many cases are forgoing the environmental aspect of the CAP.
This was borne out in the Irish Farmers Journal interview a few weeks ago when he commended Irish farmers for their take-up of CAP environmental schemes.
Where is the money?
The other big issue is budget. The CAP has already been raided to support environmental schemes, and Liam MacHale is strongly of the view that it cannot stretch any further.
The bottom line is that while recognising farmer benefit from healthy soils in increased production and less fertiliser cost, the core investment simply needs to come from “new money”.
Liam McHale also raised a concern about the risk of land being devalued by its soil health status for reasons outside the farmer’s control, eg geography.
He also mentioned integration with other pieces of regulation and, for example, how would this fit and where is the starting point, given the fact that there is growing evidence that in Ireland we may have been over estimating the emissions from peatland?
Knowing where we are starting from and having clear definitions of soil health and its measurement, plus proper farmer funding, are all essentials that need to be in place to make it happen.
After all, as Liam MacHale concluded, we have been down this road before without getting to the destination. This time, the planning and funding needs to be in place to make it happen for the benefit of farmers and society alike.
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