Analysis

SO WHAT does farming know about what it can expect from Brexit? Not nearly enough at this increasingly late hour, but the Secretary of State will have the perfect stage to address all the uncertainty if he decides to attend next week’s Great Yorkshire Show.

Michael Gove has said an Agriculture Bill will be brought forward by the end of the month. More than 44,000 individual responses were submitted to his department’s recent policy consultation and it’s time they received a response.

Mr Gove has been quite clear on some things. He wants a ‘Green Brexit’, has vowed that British food production will not be undermined by cheap imports, that support payments for the industry will shrink during a ‘transition period’ following an ‘implementation period’ of about two years after Britain formally leaves the EU next March, and future payments will be linked to the delivery of as-yet-undefined “public goods” on farms.

But it is not he that is negotiating trade deals and none of his proposals are any more than that with less than nine months until Brexit day.

The Government no doubt has confidence that a transitional period buys it time to set in stone new rules and regulations for agriculture, but the truth is that farming is by its very nature a long-term business where stocking decisions made now, for example, will have implications years down the line in a new era for the industry that has only been loosely plotted publicly by the Government since the EU referendum result in June 2016.

There’s growing fatigue about Brexit among the farming community. It is becoming a stale topic when so many questions remain unanswered and the Government seems so intent on devising plans at their own pace regardless of outside frustration.

Much hinges on future arrangements for British produce in new trade deals, but this unresolved issue mustn’t continue to undermine farming’s preparedness. Rural livelihoods are at stake and we need to see a firm plan.