For machinery use on agricultural areas, farm and site-specific conditions are decisive factors. These conditions are the basis for the machinery equipment of the farms and agricultural machinery services. They include: crops and crop rotation, soil cultivation and tillage, fertilizing and care, harvesting, soil structure, soil compaction, and soil functions, weather and soil water content. As a supplement to current recommendations, the present directive considers conditions in plant production as well as the state of the art in agricultural engineering for exemplary wheel loads. Machine/soil interaction is also taken into account (Section 1 to Section 3). On this basis, soil-protecting measures for the selection and use of machinery are derived, and concrete decision aids with regard to the trafficability of soils used for agriculture are given (Section 4) In Section 1 to Section 3, reference to Section 4 is marked /E4.1 (1)/, for example. In Section 4, references are made by mentioning the chapter, e. g. /Section 1.1.1/.