OUR EURO Notebook correspondent, Richard Wright, is never far off the mark. His assertion last week that consumers will have to pay more if farm support is cut, is tempered this week by the news that if consumer prices rise, then Brexit will be deemed a failure by those who instigated it.

The crux of this matter will be answered by how agile the government will be in both its Brexit negotiations and its chosen platform for any autonomous UK support for agriculture. It will, in truth, be a tightrope that we must fear and tremble that those who walk it on our behalf will have the guts and the foresight to make strong decisions, even in the face of opposition and never waver from the road ahead.

It will be all too easy for the lack of agricultural knowledge currently within Westminster, to use the industry as a bargaining tool for the likes of, say, the car industry, which they might think the understand more clearly. Ie, that cars = jobs.

It is up to the farming industry, though, to hammer home the undeniable fact that agriculture also equals jobs.

This industry also requires that there needs to be a shift in the Westminster assumption that all future agri-support will have 'environmental' strings attached. This is where government must be prepared to listen to science on sensitive topics, like glyphosate, weigh up any risk factors and make a decision that is right, and not just a sop to the background noise of environmental bandwagons.

There needs to be a pragmatic approach to this, not just because it's what the industry wants – it should also be the aim of good governance.

While wildlife corridors and field margins are good for all things great and small on the edges of arable farms, there's not much else that hill farmers and those on marginal upland farms can do. By having livestock, they already provide a pretty fruitful landscape for beasts and birds.

It is fanciful to think that a one size fits all approach will be a practical solution for the Heinz 57 varieties that is Scottish Ag plc. The landscape and the businesses that work in it are complex in structure and order and cannot be compartmentalised by straitjacket policies.

In short, there is no 'onesie' that will fit our farming industry.