THE CALL in last week’s issue to keep some European food rules after Brexit confirms that leaving the EU is not just a challenge for the farming industry.
The article was about protected status for PGI products and, like marketing budgets, it may only become clear whether these are worthwhile once they are stopped.
The government could, as suggested, effectively licence continued use of the scheme from the EU. This would be less than satisfactory and would not create structures for the approval of new products. A poor relation PGI, without funding at a UK level for promotion, would be fairly pointless. 
If the industry wants this, it may well have to go it alone, while persuading the government to put sufficient resources behind a new scheme that could compete in global markets against the EU.
This raises the whole issue of funds for promotion. As a result of policy changes, this has effectively been handed to Brussels. It is ratcheting up the amount available for promoting food at home and overseas, and by 2018 that budget will top €200m. 
That is a lot of money and questions are going to have to be asked at Westminster as to what the UK government will do to compete. After all, the rest of the EU, after Brexit, will be our competitor for markets in the EU-27 and overseas.
Unless a proper level of funding is made available, the UK industry is in real danger of being a distant second best. That will make maintaining and opening new markets all the more difficult. 
The EU is now our biggest market for many farm products, but it will soon be a market the UK industry will have to compete for in the same way as countries like Brazil, the US or Canada.
These are some of the realities of Brexit, and as we get closer to decisions, those realities will become more clear. 
Some will be resolved as the debate goes on between a hard and soft Brexit. At its simplest, we could have a very soft Brexit, maintaining as much as possible of the status quo, including access to the single market.
However, that does not seem to be the option calling the shots in the upper echelons of the Conservative party.
The food and farming industries would be unwise to assume that everything will come right. If we are heading for a Brexit that would limit access to the Single Market, the industry needs to be doing some tub-thumping in 2017. 
It must draw up a list of schemes now funded at an EU level and demand a commitment that these will continue in a UK form. It also needs to make clear that one of the promises of the ‘Leave’ advocates before the referendum was that funding now going to Brussels would be available to the UK economy. 
The industry needs to insist that some numbers are put on the likely cost of promoting UK food to at least the degree this will continue to happen in the EU. 
When the likely cost is known, that must become a commitment from government – a recognition that it cannot have Brexit on the cheap, unless it wants to destroy one of the key manufacturing sectors of the UK economy.
Staying with food, but on a different theme, farmers hoping for EU action on unfair trading practices (UTPs) along the food chain will have been disappointed by this week’s farm council in Brussels. 
The prospect of legislation to outlaw UTPs being used to the disadvantage of farmers and other small suppliers moved up the agenda before the meeting.
However, before it even began, the case was weakening, thanks to opposition, led by a number of member states, including Germany and the UK. 
Instead, in a typical Brussels compromise, ministers agreed the commission should prepare an ‘impact assessment’ looking at tackling UTPs.
It may be a cynical thing to say, but this looks much like what the agri-markets task force has been doing for the past year. What is emerging is a sense that governments are not interested in legislation that would be portrayed by retailers as driving up prices. 
For us, Brexit or not, the message is we need to forget what might come from Brussels and push harder for the Grocery Code Adjudicator to be given more teeth.