By Richard Wright

The OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) and the FAO (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation) are the big hitters when it comes to agricultural forecasts. Like the EU they make 10-year predictions but they take a more global view. Their forecasts are also more independent, in that they are not trying to prove that the CAP is the right policy approach.
The latest OECD report has just been published, and it confirms that an increasing global population will increase the demand for food.  
However, it makes clear that this will be met by making existing land more productive, rather than from bringing more land into agriculture.
This underlines the need for ‘sustainable intensification’ of agriculture. It also confirms, yet again, that small scale, extensive farming is not the answer to the challenges farming faces to profitably meet the needs of a growing world population.
High on the list of threats to farm businesses is price volatility, but the OECD report suggests it is here to stay because of the link between agricultural and general commodity prices.  
Often when an industry is enjoying a high water mark it does not realise it. However, looking back, particularly for the dairy sector, 2014 was a price boom, driven largely by China’s open cheque book to ensure it had ample stocks when its economy was booming.  
The report cautions against thinking those good prices of the mid-2010s for many commodities, including cereals, were a norm the industry would move back towards.  
Instead, it says these were unusual price peaks that are unlikely to come again. That means becoming more productive, mainly by using better science and technology.
To produce more at prices somewhere between where we are now, and where we were a few years ago is a big challenge. It is not one that is going to happen without significant changes in our stance towards the use of science in farming.
This is potentially an area where the government can work to open up clear blue water between the post-Brexit UK and the EU.  
When campaigning for Brexit, the former Defra minister, Owen Paterson, made clear his support for a more positive stance on science, including generically modified (GM) crops.  
The UK has been to the fore in pressing for science in Europe to be separated from politics, but never managed to secure the support needed for that to happen.  
That is why the EU over many years has never managed to come to terms with the GM issue.  Now, with planned new restrictions, it is targeting the agrochemicals needed to keep European farming competitive.  
This flies in the face of the logic of what the OECD is saying about 80% of the increase in food production over the next 10 years coming from better productivity.
When the UK has its own agricultural policy it can make its own decisions on science, but this has trade implications.  This will be  just one of the many, many areas where a clash with Brussels is inevitable.  
For key commodities it is vital we have access to the post-Brexit EU market on amicable terms.  But it is hard to envisage a situation where the UK goes its own way on science, including GM, without trade consequences.  
Trade will be the biggest negotiation with the EU for the UK, and it is difficult to imagine Brussels agreeing to imports that do not meet or even exceed the standards in the EU.  
This is ironic, since it already imports from countries outside the EU that do not meet CAP standards.  But there is no escape from the fact that the UK will be treated differently.  
Being a third country, and becoming a third country as a result of leaving the EU, will be entirely different.  That means the UK may not be as independent as it would like to be when setting its agriculture policy for the years after 2020.
This is another example of the daunting task that lies ahead for those negotiating the UK’s exit from the EU, while at the same time creating new policies.
 It is easy to forget just how long the list is of areas where decision making has been in Brussels rather than London or Edinburgh.  Examples at the moment include dairy intervention and whether the UK use this to support the market, export promotion and internal market promotion.  
The list is long because we have been embedded with the CAP for 40 plus years.