The next six months will be critical for farming organisations to defend the family farm from overly stringent environmental rules planned to enter EU law, the IFA’s director of European affairs Liam MacHale has warned.

The EU policy director said that farmers will come under cost and output pressure from three policies being debated currently – a new nature restoration law, a sustainable use of pesticides regulation and the updating of the industrial emissions directive.

These three Green Deal policies will impose rules on farmers ranging from rewetting peat soils to cutting spray use and they are all being drawn up mainly by environment and food safety officials in the European Commission.

MacHale told the Irish Farmers Journal that the IFA was particularly concerned at the lack of impact assessments done on these pieces of legislation.

The Commission’s pledge to take food security on board in these policies has been an empty gesture, according to him.

Liam McHale. \ Dave Ruffles

“We understand the impact on food production but that hasn’t come through in any analysis that we have seen and we have to continually meet now with Commission officials who aren’t as close to agriculture and to farmers as they were previously,” he said.

Previously, farming officials who had a knowledge of agriculture and its practicalities on-the-ground had handled farming policies.

“There aren’t enough impact assessments, even if there is some sort of recognition that food security will be threatened.

“We have got to defend food and the farming family continually and that will be more important over the next six months,” MacHale maintained.