By Matt Johnson
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.
Consequently, a black market has emerged where end users are paying up to £1,000 for ‘jailbroken’ software that overrides all the legal manufacturer emissions controls. This carries the risk of fines of up to £50,000 if discovered by the DVSA and successfully prosecuted. The reason many are increasingly willing to take this risk, however, is that, lurking under the bonnet of the emissions technology, lies the engine derate. When an issue is detected on the SCR system that indicates emissions are not being sufficiently reduced, a succession of derates is triggered. The first is a low-level inducement of no less than 25% of engine torque across the speed range. This then progresses to a severe derate of up to 50% engine torque. This essentially turns the most critical asset on a farm into an expensive paperweight – not by unforeseen mechanical failure, but by engineered design, to ensure compliance with the edicts from Brussels.
The Americans are already grappling with a similar predicament caused by their own emissions standards through the Environmental Protection Agency. As of August 2025, the Trump administration announced new guidance that allows farmers and truckers to revise software to prevent sudden speed and power losses caused by SCR system faults. This situation, born from Net Zero climate fanaticism, is undoubtedly contributing to the increase in food prices, which is being keenly felt by the public at the till. New tractor registrations in the UK fell 17% in the first half of 2025 compared with the same period in 2024 – the lowest number of recorded registrations since 1998. There are those who have rightly positioned themselves as opponents of the Net Zero dogma. Delivering on this opposition would mean an agricultural policy that restores sense and practicality to the industry, slashing the cost of new machinery and delivering a boost to manufacturing.
An unrealised benefit of the 2016 Brexit vote should be a new British emissions standard for non-road mobile machinery that sees a return to something closer to the Stage IIIb (2013) regulations, which are primarily sensible, practical and affordable.
