THERE CAN be no denying the contribution Donald Trump has made to golf in Scotland, or indeed his Scottish family roots. However what he will do as US president is a lot less certain.

One fact that is certain is that he will do things differently, and will challenge things that have been the norm for some time. While the reality of power is always different to the theory, if some of the things he promised happen they will have an impact on agriculture, and not only in the United States.

When it comes to domestic politics, Donald Trump knows little about agriculture. However if analysts, who have number-crunched where his votes came from are right, he won widespread support from farmers.

Indeed the final state that gave him the electoral college votes needed was Wisconsin, which is dubbed the dairy state. The predominantly male, white and older age profile of farmers fitted well with the demographic voting for Trump. No doubt the US farm lobby organisation, the Farm Bureau, will remind him that its members expect him to live up to promises to return prosperity to areas where the economic tide has been out for a long time.

How much is deliverable of what Trump promised is open to question. He may not, as he suggested, be able to scrap agreements the US has already signed on climate change. What he can do is reduce funding for international climate change activities.

Nationally, he has promised to do more to encourage fracking for shale gas, and to be more positive about oil companies developing new sites and pipelines. This has implications for the renewables industry in the US, which has been enjoying the benefits of federal encouragement and legislation. This brought about a massive shift in farm land use, from growing crops to producing ethanol for the biofuel industry. If that now falls out of fashion, that land will come back into traditional crops.

In the past, the movement of land into energy crops was blamed for spikes in commodity prices. If these crops fall out of favour in the US, it seems likely that the opposite will happen, and the impact will not only be felt there. Because of legislation demanding the use of biofuels, the US has had to import these. If demand falls, other countries will also have to put land back into food crops. On balance this is probably good, since using land to produce the raw material for renewable fuels was never a sensible economic proposition. It is also doubtful if it was a good idea for the environment, because it forced more uncultivated land into farming to meet demand for food and fuel.

These are not the reasons for the US president elect considering a change of approach, but they are policy shifts with consequences for global agriculture.

The other unknown is what will happen with trade. If initial reports are accurate, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) to forge a free trade agreement between the US and EU is all but dead.

Trump has made clear that he does not want new deals that would open the US market to more imports. Both TTIP and a similar deal with the Pacific countries seem set to be put on the shelf.

This is no bad thing for European agriculture, since there was a real concern that TTIP would open the market to imports of US beef. This seems to be off the agenda for now, but Brexit adds a new twist to this debate. The UK government is desperate to secure a trade deal with the US, and there will be a common feature of all new deals. They will start from a free trade base, and any implications this would have for agriculture will be ignored to pursue the political kudos that would come from a post-Brexit trade deal with the US being in the bag.

It is hard to establish where the new president will be on trade. He will certainly be aggressive in encouraging US exports, and it is doubtful if he can succeed in imposing new tariffs on countries like China. He will however do what he can to be seen to be tough and delivering on commitments. This could see US overseas aid linked to buying American products, and that could have implications for the EU, and after Brexit, the UK.

However there are no certainties about anything, so to paraphrase the old Chinese curse, we are certainly living in interesting times.