AS WE move closer to Brexit, the list of issues facing agriculture gets longer.

This is not just about support structures but all the other things the EU now handles, and which governments have been able to forget about for years. This will demand a bigger commitment to decision making than has been shown since the referendum last June, and it is something returning or new Defra ministers will not be able to keep ignoring.

A letter writer in The Scottish Farmer recently queried what would happen to the protected geographical indication scheme after Brexit? Scotland has done well in securing PGI status for key products, so it's a good question.

Like the rest of the UK it will need all the marketing muscle it can gather to succeed in a potentially more difficult trading environment. Part of that will be about sewing up the UK market against eurozone competition. Concepts, like PGI, will be important in doing so.

The problem is that the scheme is owned and managed by the European Commission. It gives PGI international credibility, so the UK cannot simply carry on with the same name.

We will instead need to develop a UK equivalent, with the resources and significant financing that would require.

This is just one of a long list of areas now controlled by the EU.

Another is the approval of plant varieties and chemicals. This raises questions about whether the post-Brexit UK will continue to follow the EU approach on genetically modified crop approvals and pesticides.

When farmer votes were being canvassed to support leaving the EU, one of the suggestions was that the UK would be able to develop a globally competitive farming industry, freed of EU controls and the anti-science politics around many decisions.

A key question is whether the government in London would risk public opinion by allowing GM crops, or overturning EU opposition to the use, for example, of neonicotinoids.

These are both examples of situations where science would dictate a different direction to the precautionary principle approach of the EC.

However, even if returned with a massive majority, it is questionable whether the Conservatives would reject completely the more cautious approach of Brussels. Doing so would attract criticism from pressure groups and voters, no matter how well the science was explained.

This underlines that leaving the EU is not about overturning all the policies put in place by Brussels. That was not made clear this time last year by those advocating an exit from the EU.

It would be an honest gesture now if they acknowledged that many things will remain the same. That will include a lot of the restrictions farmers hoped they would escape by backing Brexit.

There is a more fundamental issue at play when it comes to GM and agrochemicals. That is the attitude of the EU-27 if we want to sell to them after 2019.

Despite all the political rhetoric, it is almost certain we will not end up with a hard Brexit, but with one with a trade agreement between the EU-27 and the UK.

This will give the UK some level of access to the Single Market, but getting food into that market will depend on meeting the same standards as those of the EU member states and the new CAP.

This is known as equivalence and it is what we want to see applied to southern hemisphere and South American imports in the free trading world the UK government wants after Brexit.

If the UK breaks too far away from EU-27 standards, they will not accept our produce, unless we live with the complexities of different production methods to service that market.

This is going to be a major challenge and into that mix can be added the question of what will happen to rural development projects funded through the CAP.

The UK has always had a poor share of that budget – but it has helped a number of projects in Scotland.

There has been no mention of whether the UK government will make up that funding from all the money we were told would be saved from not having to send it to Brussels.

As the anniversary of the referendum approaches, what's needed after the election is a new honesty about what is and is not possible.