EU Net Zero Regulations Are Killing Off British Agriculture – And we Slavishly Enforce Them, Even Though We’ve Left the EU

 The UK is still beholden to EU emissions standards, which, like most things under the purview of the European Union, have become bureaucratic and are applied in ways that are detrimental to both efficiency and productivity, without doing a proper cost – benefit analysis. Vehicles in high-traffic residential areas should rightly be given greater weight when it comes to pollution reduction, but should a tractor working on a farm or in the middle of a field, miles from the nearest village, be subject to the same conditions?

EU emissions regulations for non-road mobile machinery have become more and more stringent over the last decade, to the point where the demands on the technology have led to runaway costs and new machinery has essentially become emissions-regulation equipment with an engine attached. The cost of emissions-regulation technology can account for 20–30% of the total list price for a new vehicle such as a tractor, excavator, bulldozer, or any other type of non-road mobile machinery. The technology required to bring emissions into compliance with the Stage IV and Stage V standards places huge burdens on manufacturers and end users. Failures of the emission-monitoring components result in large warranty bills for manufacturers, which are pushed onto end users through eye-watering extended warranty programmes. Those who cannot afford these, or whose machine has reached an age where the manufacturer’s warranty has expired, can be left with a ticking time bomb. A single component failure can result in bills of several thousand pounds which, for a small family farm often with only a single tractor, can cause significant financial hardship...<<<Read More>>>...