The EU Commission wants to suspend regulations for agricultural fallow land by 2023

In view of the bottlenecks in the grain trade caused by the Ukraine war, the EU Commission has given the green light for an extended suspension of the so-called crop rotation rule. This would maximize the EU's production capacities for grain for the production of food, the Brussels authority said on Friday. The extended suspension of the crop rotation obligation still has to be approved by the governments of the EU member states.

The crop rotation regulation stipulates that around 1.5 million hectares of arable land must lie fallow in the EU. This is an area about half the size of Belgium. The regulation is intended to protect the fertility of the soil and nature.

To compensate for the shortage of Russian and Ukrainian grain caused by the Ukraine war, the commission had already approved a "temporary" exemption from the crop rotation rule for 2022 in March. This enables farmers to grow "crops for food" on land that is actually fallow.

The derogation is now to be extended to the 2023 cultivation year. However, the EU Commission emphasized that "in the longer term, crop rotation must be resumed in order to protect soil quality and biodiversity."

Meanwhile, representatives of Ukraine and Russia signed agreements with Turkey and the UN on Friday in Istanbul to resume grain shipments from Ukrainian ports blocked as a result of the Russian invasion. The grain is to be transported on secured routes in the Black Sea.