Agri-policy vacuum at Westminster

This was a good point, but what sprung to mind was a hope that farmers will be part of that decision and that the debate is around what the farming industry wants, and believes will work, as opposed to what an urban-focussed government in London decides.

The Defra minister, Andrea Leadsom, has made few comments about how she sees the future. She was reported recently saying she was committed to a vote on removing the ban on fox hunting before the end of this parliament. That is a view that will go down well with the Tory party faithful, but this should not be top of her list of priorities, if she wants to make the countryside work and deliver for the UK economy.

It would be better at this stage to hear her telling the Treasury that in its spending plans it must allow for the cost of supporting agriculture on a scale equivalent to the CAP. This is what Mrs Leadsom and other Leave advocates suggested would happen when, with considerable success, they made the case for farmers to vote for Brexit. Since then things have gone quiet, and that really is not fair to the farmers across the UK who turned out to hear the case for Leave that was put forward.

There is certainly a case for a debate between coupled and decoupled supports; if we are going back to the future we could consider all the weird and wonderful ways the EU tried to control agricultural spending, including stabilisers, quotas and monetary compensatory amounts to balance out currency differences. But as is so often said now, we are where we are. That is on an unplanned road to leaving the EU and the CAP within the next three years. Given that farming is a long term industry, it is unacceptable that there is such a huge policy vacuum at Westminster about the way ahead.

The UK farm lobby organisations are cooperating and working hard to come up with a plan, based around the need for trade and farm support. If the government is not going to put anything on the table, or is being too slow about doing so, it could be time to lead from the front.

It is becoming more clear what the negotiating grounds could be. The European Commission, for the post 2020 CAP, is hinting at more use of financial instruments. These are a loose term for soft loans via the European Investment Bank. Outside the EU, the UK would not have access to these, so it would be difficult to follow that lead if this is central to EU policy.

The European Commission is also becoming more focussed on insurance type arrangements through the rural development policy. This all seems to reflect a determination to move away from the concept of direct payments, towards a policy Brussels believes it can sell more easily to taxpayers.

What this all means is that in the negotiations with London, the farming industry is going to have to come up with some truly radical thinking.

It cannot simply point to what is happening with the CAP, saying it wants more of the same. If Mrs Leadsom cannot come up with fresh thinking, the farming lobby needs to do so, and do so quickly. Already green groups are lining up to make their case for a support structure that is more about the environment than food production. There is a sense that those arguments are going down well in London. The longer it is left, the harder it will be to persuade the government that environmental policy has to go hand in hand with a competitive, food producing, agricultural economy.

The farm unions needs to show, with robust facts, that farmers are the only realistic custodians of the countryside; they need to press the case for putting clear water between the anti-science policies of the EU and a new UK agricultural policy committed to farmers being globally competitive food producers.

That is possible, but it is looking more and more likely that the drive will have to come from farmers. Brussels will not set an example the UK will be able to follow and for now there are precious few signs London will deliver a timely or acceptable policy.