REGARDING future support for agriculture, it is worth giving the Defra minister, Michael Gove, the benefit of the doubt that he will get things right.

Whether this is justified will soon become clear, when his final plans emerge. This will be the first time flesh has been put on the bones of what will replace the £3bn a year that comes through the CAP.

Many farmers who voted to leave the EU will say 'about time', with their fingers firmly crossed that what will emerge will be better.

Based on events in Brussels, the differences between what is likely to emerge for the UK and the future of CAP are narrowing. Both are on parallel tracks to deliver new thinking after 2020. Both have question marks about future funding.

In the UK, the unknown is the generosity of the Treasury. In Brussels, it is the degree to which member states will fill the hole in the EU budget after the UK leaves.

Money is the key and once that is sorted in both London and Brussels, things should fall into place relatively quickly. But, regardless of the final decisions, it is difficult to see the future CAP being as generous as now.

That is a progression that has been going on for some time and would have continued with or without Brexit, as demands on the EU budget grow. Looking at the priorities EU farm ministers are setting for the post-2020 CAP, there is not a huge difference between those and the ideas Michael Gove is pushing.

This should give farmers some reassurance that, at least so far as support is concerned, the decision to leave the EU was not about walking away from a pot of gold for a pot of pennies. Whether that decision delivers the hoped for reduction in red tape is, however, a different question. It is one that only time and the implementation of a new UK policy will confirm.

In Brussels, farm ministers have a reasonable level of common cause on the way ahead for the CAP. They are agreed on the need for a policy that targets funds to 'genuine farmers', which seems to be Brussels speak for cutting back or eliminating aid to large landowners.

This suggests that 20 years after they were suggested in MacSharry CAP reforms, degressivity policies could finally be part of the future. This would be in line with what Gove is suggesting for the UK.

This is ironic, given that it was the Conservative government and the then farm minister, John Gummer, that battled to prevent the EC introducing these policies in the 1990s.

Other priorities include additional aid for young farmers, which may not be on the Gove agenda – and the linking of payments to the delivery of 'public goods' which is completely in line with Gove's thinking.

On rural development, EU farm ministers want a simpler, less bureaucratic policy, which will be welcome. This is an area not yet touched on by the government in London. The UK will have to come up with a workable policy or accept the demise of many rural development schemes that depend on EU funding.

This is not about affordability, since money will be saved by not funding rural development elsewhere in the EU via the UK contribution, but about the Treasury seeing this as a priority. If, as forecast, Brexit has a negative impact on the wider UK economy the pressure on government spending and the implementation of priorities can only get worse.

Gove's performance at the English NFU annual meeting was, as you would expect, politically sure-footed. He promised a review of farm inspections, which was bound to go down well.

But he needs to confirm that this is possible when the UK is still implementing CAP direct payments, or indeed under his seemingly bureaucratic plan to link support payments to environmental delivery. He also played for the non-farming vote, by promising support payments for animal welfare delivery. This is deeply patronising to farmers across the UK who every day, in the face of weather and financial problems, already deliver animal welfare standards ahead of many other EU member states.

It certainly seems now that the EU-27 and Gove want similar styles of support for agriculture – but the government at Westminster still has a long way to go to prove that their approach will be driven by a genuine interest in farming and food production.