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New rules dictating what direction farmers can plough their fields are being considered by the Department of Agriculture.
Officials have confirmed that it is proposing to introduce a new cross-compliance rule that tillage farmers can only plough horizontally across any field that has a slope of more than 15% if the field is being ploughed after 1 December. The move is prompted by an EU audit.
The proposal is contingent on the Department of Agriculture being able to identify these sloped parcels to farmers in 2018, a spokesperson told the Irish Farmers Journal. If the field could not be ploughed horizontally due to health and safety reasons, the parcel should not be ploughed vertically until as close to sowing date as possible but not before 1 January, the spokesperson added.
The proposed addition to the Good Agricultural and Environmental Conditions (GAEC) would come into effect at the end of 2018.
There are fears that if the steepness of a slope is introduced as a criteria for how it is ploughed, that this could later be used to dictate other farm management tasks such as slurry spreading.
New rules are farcical
As European Commissioner for Agriculture Phil Hogan unveils his plan to reduce the red tape involved in CAP, someone else in the Commission is dreaming up new rules to add to the already complicated life of a tillage farmer.
Their proposal would force tillage farmers to plough horizontally across fields that exceed a 15% slope, if that field is being ploughed after 1 December.
Why is this being considered?
It might relate to the possibility of soil erosion where loose soil flows down a hill and which, if it reached a water body, might carry phosphorous with it.
But if the headlands are ploughed perpendicular to the slope, the vast majority of moving sediment tends to get trapped there.
The proposed rule change is dependent on being able to identify arable land parcels with a slope greater than 15% and to be able to show them on maps.
The folly in the proposal is that many fields with big hills tend to slope in more than one direction. At its simplest, what might one do where there is a sharp hill in the middle of a large field?
Many of the fields I know have two slopes up the same hill and ploughing that would be horizontal on one slope would be perpendicular on the other.
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