Watching some great rugby at the weekend, I thought back to the days when my fellow columnist, Jim Walker, was the NFU Scotland president.

Back then, we spent many hours in Brussels debating the merits of Irish and Scottish rugby. Then, it would have been hard to even dream of the performance both are delivering in the Six Nations.

Just like rugby, as the 1990s gave way to the 2000s, agriculture played on a bigger stage – a presence in Brussels was essential to secure the best for Scottish farmers. That influence, from being part of the European farming lobby, was lost with Brexit and it has not been replaced.

Brexit has reduced not only the political influence of farming in the UK, but has denied it the levers needed to secure a proper balance between food production and environmental goals. That is under threat in the EU too, but not to the degree it is in the UK and its devolved regions.

It was no surprise, then, that leading advocates of Brexit were part of a cross party political meeting to debate why it has failed to deliver. This is not a question that has an easy answer. If there is an answer its roots lie in the wild claims of leave supporters about the sunny uplands that lay ahead outside the EU.

If those ever existed, they have been crushed by how Covid and Russian action in Ukraine changed the world and made big power and trade blocs more important than ever.

Much of the failure of Brexit is down to the same politicians now asking why their dream went sour. They failed to seize the opportunities it offered to be radical and global.

We are still following the same agricultural policies as the EU, but making them even greener with less funding – and politicians have shown no interest in bolstering home-produced food, or being tough towards imports. We are out of the EU, but still in it.

This would make membership of the European Economic Area and the single market easy, but Conservative politician still run scared of the supposed might of its Brexit wing, despite that wing's inability to show tangible benefits from Brexit. That loss of influence for agriculture is highlighted by the prime minister fobbing the English NFU off with a video, instead of a proper presence at its agm, next week.

It is not, however, only Brexit that is reducing the influence of farming and it is not confined to the UK. A report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which represents the world's developed economies, has warned of a labour and skills shortage in the industry.

This is a global issue that affects OECD members in different ways, meaning there is no single, simple solution. Its report says the issue is rooted in agriculture being now 'relatively small and declining' in its contribution to national economies.

It said that this was made worse by the poor perception people have of it as an industry to work in. Education or skills have not developed and so it is effectively written off by people as an industry offering hard work for low wages and with poor career prospects.

This is an unfortunate image, particularly for young people. In reality, those who acquire skills can travel anywhere to work using skills that are transferable to different countries and different enterprises.

The OECD said the solution lay in improving the image of agriculture in parallel with addressing the skills shortage. However, it acknowledged that immigration is the easy and default answer when facing labour shortages. This answers a short term crisis problem, but does nothing to address the skills gap and indeed can make the situation worse by further driving down wages.

This is a familiar problem for the UK, since Brexit closed off easy access to EU migrant labour happy to work in agriculture and food. With UK unemployment relatively low, it has become a major issue for food processors as well as farmers, with both well aware that while migrant labour was happy to work in the industry local people are not, because of the negatives highlighted in the OECD report.

That document confirmed that the skills and labour shortage the UK is experiencing are not entirely down to Brexit, but that sudden loss of easy access to open labour markets in Europe was yet another political decision never thought through before being implemented.