WHILE Prime Minister Theresa’s plan to offer more cash in the UK’s ‘divorce settlement’ from the EU might just be the catalyst to kick-start some real movement on negotiations for the deal, it is not the best news for the farming industry.

Agriculture remains in limbo in the talks as a ‘who gets the dug’ tug-of-no-so-love in the UK’s divorce deal. This offer of a substantial increase in our Golden Handshake to the EU, could herald a squeeze on spending – and guess who will be in the firing line for that.

As our Euro Notebook correspondent, Richard Wright, points out on the page opposite, the money being handed to the EU to secure a pathway to further talks, is exactly the amount of money that pro-Brexiteers said we would be saving if we left.

So, bizarrely, this deal could see us hand over the keys to the house, while we in the UK are left holding the proverbial marital dog and not much else. It also means that we have little cash left to feed that dog – which is a good metaphor for us in agriculture – while across Europe we’ll be buying new houses, building roads and infrastructure, to say nothing of supporting the very farmers that we will have to compete against.

It also foretells a squeeze on domestic spending that we can only imagine will impact directly on agriculture. We will be paying into the EU coffers to support their proper farmers, while our Mr Gove intends to produce a farming ‘budget’ that will favour the minority interests of the environmental lobby.

While that is all well and good – and many farmers have more than bought into greening measures – there’s a point where it all begins to unravel. That is the point where we cannot produce enough to sustain a national or local food supply. Already, there is great disquiet amongst the big retailers, who fear for food supplies should the so-called ‘hard Brexit’ materialise.

There needs to be a strong and nerveless political will to maintain production in tandem with looking after the environment, and not just a blinkered approach. The needs of the industry at large must also be catered for.

In that respect, a UK that goes it alone in allowing the likes of glyphosate to be an active part of the industry’s armoury against pestilence, would be a good start. While there may be enough evidence on neonicotinoids to go along with a tight control on their use, glyphosate is another thing altogether.

If you do nothing else this week, read our View from the East columnist, Dr Keith Dawson’s take on how the environmental lobby were allowed to hijack the glyphosate debate and turn it into a political football from which we will all eventually suffer. It’s on page 24 of this week's The Scottish Farmer.