THE DEFRA Secretary, Michael Gove, did not waste too much time in the job before he made a big declaration for fishermen. He promised that after Brexit the UK would again take control of British waters, ending agreements that allow other countries to fish there.

This will confirm to the fishing industry that it was right to support Brexit. The arrangements Gove wants to scrap, and the Common Fishery Policy, have been disasters for the scale and profitability of the UK fishing industry.

Time will tell whether the government can deliver on such commitments. Another question is whether it has the ships and staff to protect the waters it wants to take back from illegal fishing.

When it comes to agriculture, the key issue is how free the government will be to break away from EU regulations. A good example is greening, which has become even more bureaucratic, with the ban on pesticide use in environmental focus areas.

Greening has always been one of the truly bureaucratic parts of the CAP reform by the former farm commissioner, Dacian Ciolos. It was policies like this farmers wanted to escape when they voted for Brexit. But while it was easy for Gove to talk tough over fishing, agricultural regulations are different.

If the UK is happy to exit the Single Market, and really believes trade with the rest of the world can replace exports to the EU-27, then it can do what it wants. However if it wants to trade with the EU on similar terms to now, for example exporting lamb to France, then its freedom to ignore EU regulations is more limited than when tearing up fishing agreements.

The EU 27 will almost certainly demand parallel standards in the UK as the price of trade. Farmers that do not want to see British produce coming into the EU will feel justified blocking trade if UK standards are, in their view, lower than under the CAP. Ignoring greening, for example, could allow farmers in the EU 27 to claim imports are gaining from standards in the UK being lower.

Think of other frustrating regulations farmers hoped Brexit would allow them to escape, and the trade implications are similar. The difference between then and now is that trade with the EU-27 will be a game without a referee. If, for example, France now seeks to block the import of lamb from Scotland, they can be taken to the European Court. This is now a speedy process, but after Brexit the government has said it will no longer recognise the European court, so presumably the complaint would have to be to the World Trade Organisation. There, the dispute timetable is years rather than weeks or months.

This is a big challenge, and to date government comments on trade have been a triumph for hope over expectation. The freedom of being outside the Single Market, in terms of not accepting free movement of people as others do, comes at a price. What the price will be only time, and a greater understanding of how much the EU-27 wants to protect its access to the UK, will reveal.

Another big trade issue is what standards the UK will impose on imports from countries with which it is keen to secure post-Brexit trade deals.

A recent meat industry conference in London heard a warning that the UK could find itself squeezed between the United States and EU over the import of beef from animals treated with hormone growth promoters. The US will be keen to convince the EU it is wrong to ban this beef, by encouraging the UK to accept it as part of the price of a wider trade deal.

UK consumers apart, this would cause big strains over trade between the UK and the EU-27. This would be over fears among farmers and consumer groups that the UK could be used as a staging post to allow US hormone-treated beef into Europe by the back door.

This is more about politics than reality, but then everything to do with Brexit is political and will remain that way for a long time, even after the UK leaves. While the focus at this industry event was on hormones and beef, similar trade problems will almost certainly arise over lamb from New Zealand, GM crops from north and south America and others not yet thought of, but which will emerge as the trade issues surrounding Brexit move from theory to reality.