I was never quite sure what the proposed EU soils directive was meant to achieve – it was almost 10 years in gestation and in 2014, the Council of Ministers decided they were not going to implement it and the work stopped. Many regretted the decision but I suspect that many farmers were relieved not to have yet another reason for official inspectors to call and make sure that farmers were obeying another set of rules and regulations.

Yet soil is critically important. Here in Ireland, with most of the land in grass, it is largely taken for granted. With excess moisture in the winter, animal performance tends to suffer before soils do but soil care is meant to be observed under the code of good farming practice.

Last week, world soils day was held and at a packed gathering in a large lecture hall in UCD, there was a series of talks and lectures including one from Ireland’s most distinguished living soil scientist, John Ryan, a native of Tipperary but who has worked internationally and gained honours across the world.

He put up on the screen horrifying examples of soil degradation leading to poverty and ultimately war.

We can easily overlook what soil does for us. Apart from producing goods such as food, fuel and fibre – the traditional output of farming – it also purifies water, recycles nutrients, sequesters carbon and is an enormous store of microbes and worm life. There are literally billions of organisms in a teaspoon of soil.

Travelling and meeting people can bring home how different countries view their soil and take steps to safeguard its capacity to produce in the long term.

I remember a senior Australian civil servant saying that the worst inheritance they received from Europe was the plough as the high temperatures oxidised the soil, reduced the organic matter, saw yields plummet and salinisation occurred from top soil being eroded.

Argentina

In Argentina, wonderful land had to be laid down to grass after a few years in tillage for some of the same reasons. Both Argentina and Australia, as well as Brazil in latter years, solved their problems by the energetic development of min-till technology. This has let new competitors emerge and held down prices for us.

Other countries are having greater difficulty in coping with either excess phosphate leaching from the soil in the Netherlands or soil erosion and silt seeping into rivers on some new dairy farms in New Zealand.

Here at home, peat extraction has been partially responsible for our low ranking in dealing with carbon emissions.

As farmers, we don’t have a soils directive to cope with but that doesn’t get over the fact that our soil is the most valuable resource we have.