I often wonder do the wise people – assuming there are some – in Agriculture House ponder where farming is inevitably headed? I’m thinking of the number of new regulations that spew out of this building on a weekly basis.

There can be no doubt that farming is facing wipe out in a few short years’ time due to regulation. Maybe other industries are being throttled to the same degree but I can only speak for agriculture. Possibly businesses that have nothing to do with safety or the environment are largely free of regulations. A bookseller or a barber must live a pretty charmed existence, largely left to do their own thing. But the food safety and feed industry is shackled with regulations as are, I imagine, environmental impactful industries like quarrying.

Between climate change and increasing regulation, farming is becoming a very tough business. The demands now in place around nutrient management plans are a case in point. Take our farm for example where we are in a phosphorus (P) deficit with most soils hovering around index 2.

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But because of regulations I cannot now meet the crops’ demand in what I am allowed to spread.

The manner in which fertiliser is being regulated will mean spreaders are practically obsolete in a few years’ time. To operate a sprayer, you now effectively need a licence and it’s only a matter of time before a full sprayer cannot travel on the public road without a permit.

Cover crops and multi-species swards (MSS) are the hot ticket with policy-makers at the present time. I see cover crops, with no commercial value, as a waste of diesel, Roundup and time. Besides, they conflict with a beans/cereal/rape rotation and contain weed seeds.

As for MSS, try making it into silage as I did. It resembles a celery soup and the cattle need a spoon to eat it. But celery soup would have a better dry matter digestibility – the silage is a poor 59.

Brussels and Dublin need to cop themselves on before it’s too late. Regulations are strangling farming with a slow and painful death. Young people with a good Leaving Certificate and options are not coming into this industry and I don’t blame them. The average age of farmers will rise while the number of full-time farmers falls. Food production will plummet as will happen if the nitrates derogation goes for dairy farmers. This will largely go unheeded for a few years by the powers-that-be. However, in 10 years’ time, the situation could be very grim with the EU unable to feed itself. Food security was never as important as it is now.

No long-term plans

The problem with politicians is that they don’t see beyond the next election. There are no long-term plans (we see this in our national infrastructural deficit at the present time) and nobody in authority is taking a long and balanced view that is not jaundiced by quangos, NGOs and Nimbyism.

And there’s probably more unrest in the EU than at any time heretofore. Fellow comrade-in-arms, Britain, is long gone and superpower France is very shaky and politically restless. Germany has leanings again to the far right while Italy’s prime minister Meloni is likewise. Hungary is pro-Russia and so on it goes. I think we can say Europe’s halcyon days are over.

It’s a time for strong European leadership with the foresight to get us back on track.

I had hopes for Micheál Martin as the leader of Government in our European presidency next year, but his monumental cock-up in the Irish presidential debacle is unforgivable. He has opened the door to his nemesis in the far left and he will need to act more wisely next year.