Brexit can bring farming into the future

From robotics to gene editing, EU rules have stopped our farmers from exploring new methods

Boris Johnson’s unequivocal message that the Withdrawal Agreement is “dead” is good news for the UK’S farmers. Its dire ramifications would have all but ceded control of UK agriculture to the EU. We would not even have been free to decide the levels of financial support for landowners; the terms of the Agreement would have forced the UK to keep support for British producers pegged at the 2019 level while allowing EU competitors to increase theirs, handing them an enormous advantage.

Abandoning this punitive Agreement, the UK can now build a bespoke system of agricultural support tailored to the needs of British

farmers at or above the level which they receive under the EU’S Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). To expand into new markets, we need to move away from production subsidies, but these can be more than replaced by a system of financial rewards for environmental and public goods – maintaining the cultural landscape, promoting soil quality, improving biodiversity, and providing effective water management.

In parallel with a new support system, farmers can boost their productivity outside the precautionary constraints of the CAP. The benign British climate, the length of its days and its soil quality provide some of the most productive land in the world. We can have every confidence that food-producing areas of the country will continue to prosper once released from the CAP and encouraged to embrace the latest technologies – from gene editing to robotics. France, for example, is missing out on over 4.5 tonnes per hectare in its maize yield compared to the US. That crop could be worth hundreds of millions of euros to the French economy, or free up 500,000 hectares for wildlife, recreation, or forestry.

Likewise, harnessing genetics in New Zealand has produced spectacular increases in productivity with easier lambing and sheep who grow faster, yield more meat and are less prone to disease. British sheep and livestock farmers can replicate the successes, which have seen the average number of sheep managed by one person in New Zealand rise from 850 to over 4,000 since the Eighties.

There is a palpable demand for British products abroad, and our Government will need to be proactive in opening new markets around the world as well as prioritising a UK/US trade deal. In Oklahoma, for instance, I learnt of exciting potential plans to distribute Welsh lamb across the US, flying it directly from Cardiff airport. Meanwhile, crab producers in the South West, previously heavily dependent on EU markets, have opened up new opportunities on WTO terms for high-quality crab in Asia.

The market for Scotch whisky in India has enormous potential. The import tariff alone is currently over 150 per cent, and there are numerous extra taxes and regulations across different Indian states, but some estimates show that the whole of Scotland could not fully meet demand if the duties were abolished.

UK exports to the EU will remain important, which is why returning to a zero-tariff, zero-quota Free Trade Agreement, as Donald Tusk offered, is the best way forward for all parties. However, a responsible government must have Wto-compliant measures in place, should the EU insist on tariffs.

It is absurd to think, as Project Fear has implied, that the Government would simply do nothing in those circumstances. Potential EU tariffs are estimated at £5.2billion, but, for example, measures like expanded support for research and development schemes (£2.1billion), regional aid programmes (£3.1billion) and transitional assistance programmes for businesses adjusting to Brexit and new markets (£695million) could more than mitigate such a scenario. There is also enormous scope for import substitution.

The central message of all this is that the demise of the Withdrawal Agreement represents a huge opportunity for the UK’S farmers. We are leaving an EU that is rapidly turning into the “museum of world farming”. By contrast, we have a great chance to make technologically-aware policy fit for the future and embrace free trade across the world.