IT IS hard to think of a time when there has been less certainty in agriculture.

We are in a squeeze where we do not know the outcome of Brexit, what a Trump presidency will do in the United States or whether the weakness of sterling delivering better prices is the new norm. That could change, as global events affect perceptions about the relative strength of the UK economy, eurozone and the United States under Trump.

Global politics has become another unknown farmers have to live with in 2017. The arguments about Brexit and the future of support are familiar. Despite events like the Oxford Farming Conference, we are not a lot wiser about how farming will be supported, whether we will be in the Single Market or what sort of trade deals the UK will seek with the rest of the world.

The threat remains that the default policy will be tariff-free access. That would be a big problem for agriculture. But the government will argue that this would keep down food prices and increase choice and flexibility for food processors and retailers.

An even bigger unknown is what will happen with US agricultural policy under a Trump presidency, in less than three weeks time. One positive is that while the new agriculture secretary will be one of his last cabinet appointments, he is seeking someone with some knowledge of agriculture.

That is important, because Trump seems to have little knowledge or indeed interest in the subject. He was successful in securing the farmer vote in many areas, but that was largely because he said he would take away powers from the Environmental Protection Agency. Farmers were concerned it would target water use and hostility towards the EPA won a lot of farmer support for Trump. This was akin to farmers supporting Brexit because they were frustrated with the red tape that surrounds the CAP.

Trump certainly needs a good farm secretary, since he has no vision of what he wants to do with the world's biggest farming economy. During the campaign he came out against GM, but quickly backed down when told this was a technology embraced by American farmers. Trump has made no secret that he wants to roll back climate change legislation, but at the same time has said that he supports the production and use of ethanol from farms.

Trump's big interest is in agriculture as a driver of trade, and as a source of employment in the US. He has however said he will target illegal immigration and that is a threat to an industry that depends on migrant labour for everything from growing and harvesting vegetables, to staffing the big dairy units.

When it comes to trade, Trump wants to export, but he wants to roll back free trade deals. He even wants to overturn NAFTA, which since 1994 has created a free trade zone between the US, Mexico and Canada. He has said he will block the trans-Pacific trade deal with Asia and the TTIP free trade deal with Europe is just about dead.

In that scenario, it is hard to see where American agriculture will go. Trump is unlikely to roll back support, but he is also unlikely to be a great enthusiast for a Farm Bill that shields farmers from the market, albeit not on the scale the CAP does in the EU.

As a populist, swept to power by once Democrat voters in the rust belt states of the north and east, Trump knows low food prices are important. If those are being delivered by the market he will be happy with that outcome, regardless of international obligations to bodies like the World Trade Organisation or United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation.

An interest in agriculture is not a requirement to be the US president, and Trump is unlikely to focus much of his attention on it. However if farming policies help drive his other goals he will use it to achieve that, be it exports, creating new jobs or undermining the environmental lobby.

It will be a far cry from Eisenhower's great comment about farming being easy when your plough was a pencil and the nearest corn field was a thousand miles away. Trump is more likely to see agriculture as a means to an end, as he is unlikely to ever understand the passion farmers have for what they do, or the impact it has on areas about which he has little understanding.