THIS IS a week when writing a column that touches on politics is difficult.
As I do so, the election result is still an unknown, but by the time you read this, it will be history. Whatever the outcome, the hope has to be that whoever is appointed the Defra Secretary hits the ground running to come up with a policy to shape the future of farming across the UK.
It was no surprise that the NFU in England said this week that farmer confidence was waning because of Brexit uncertainty. That is not rooted in uncertainty about the event, which is now inevitable. It reflects the lack of political vision at Westminster to shape a future for an industry that is a lot more important to the economy than the government has acknowledged since the Brexit decision was taken.
Farmers need a new team at Defra, prepared to start with a clean sheet, listen to the industry and develop a plan around a productive agriculture that also delivers for the environment. 
It is a disgrace that a year on from the referendum, the EU, with all the problems of dealing with 27 member states, is a lot further ahead in negotiations on a post-2020 CAP than the UK is on the much simpler task of coming up with an agricultural policy to drive a competitive UK farming industry.
With a new government we need honest answers. These include how long will the transition be to ending direct payments, which is inevitable; what degree of devolution of farm policy will there be and above all what the budget for agricultural support will be and how that will be used to benefit food production and the environment.
That information would end the waning confidence highlighted by the NFU. It would also help with the dawning of the reality that the future lies not in support dependence, but in farmers producing more with same resources or at a lower cost.
At the same time Defra needs to use some of the additional staff it is getting to develop a plan for farmers to help close the UK food deficit. 
This now stands at 40%, which is big even allowing for the food we need to import and cannot grow. At the same time, Defra needs to put more than talk into plans to develop export markets, ending the bluff about whether it can replace the EU-27 with new markets if we end up with a hard Brexit.
Planning for the future is always a challenge, but with the world population growing at a record rate it would have been safe to assume that the United Nations would see this as a challenge to be met by driving agricultural productivity.
The general view has been that producing more from the same land area, and making sure what is harvested reaches consumers, is the best way to feed a growing world population without damaging the environment by bringing virgin land into cultivation. 
This is why it was surprising that the head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Jose Graziano Da Silva, told members of the European parliament’s agriculture committee the future lay in relatively low tech solutions. 
This is all the more surprising, given that he is a Brazilian agronomist, and has seen first hand how that country and others in South America have become agricultural superpowers.
His view is that intensification has increased production, but at an unacceptable cost to the environment, in terms of pesticide use, loss of water resources and soil depletion. 
This adds weight to claims that even in southern Europe, water is now one of the limiting factors for agriculture, perhaps making Scotland’s wet summers more of a positive than we thought. 
The FAO head’s view of the future is of an agriculture that is knowledge-intensive, rather than input-intensive. In his words “nourishing people must go hand in hand with nurturing the planet”. 
His view of sustainability is around reducing pesticides and chemicals, encouraging crop diversification and helping smallholders and family farms grow. That might seem idealistic, but it is a view many will share. 
The big unknown is whether that can deliver the food needed to meet the needs of a population now at seven billion and heading for nine billion by 2050. 
That might be a gamble, but it is a plan for debate, and that is more than UK agriculture has had in the year since the referendum.