Legal Protection of the Productive Capacity of Soils – Selected Issues

The subject of the article is the legal aspects of protecting the productive capacity of soils. The study is of a scientific and research nature. The author starts from the statement that soils perform, in particular, environmental, economic, social and cultural functions, while for the protection of the characteristics that determine the possibility of using soils in food production, production functions, combined with the production function of agriculture, are important. Thus, the purpose of the analysis is to determine whether current Polish legislation sufficiently takes into account the need to protect the productive capacity of soils, understood as the possibility of sustainable use of these resources for food production. Consideration of this issue leads to the conclusion that the current legislation does not sufficiently take into account the need to protect the productive functions of soils, while a certain degree of protection is assumed by draft EU legislation on, among other things, soil monitoring granting Member States a significant role in tracking, assessing and managing the condition of soils.