Last week, I attended the Oxford Farming Conference. It is held every year during the first week of January and it provides a terrific melting pot of people and ideas. This year, I was anxious to get an update on how members of the official British agriculture industry were looking forward to life outside the EU. Official Britain was well represented with the keynote speech given by Andrea Leadsom, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Her speech and questions were followed by a discussion among regional ministers from Wales, Northern Ireland, the junior minister from Whitehall, George Eustice and an MP from Scotland.

It was striking and somewhat alarming to see how few facts were available and even a clear sense of direction was lacking.

With the UK our biggest food and agricultural customer, I found Leadsom’s constant reassurances about forthcoming in-depth consultation “with all the stakeholders” less than convincing. She held out the prospects of great new markets in China, India and the Gulf states. She made a clear statement that when Britain leaves, the UK “will not reduce the import standards on welfare and traceability and will not use poorer quality imports to undermine UK farmers”.

Reassuring

From an Irish point of view, that sounded reassuring but the UK is only 60% self-sufficient in food and it is going to be interesting to see if they envisage increasing food self-sufficiency or become reliant on imports that meet their standards. There was no policy of continuing support through the basic farm payments system beyond repeating that it was guaranteed until 2020.

After that, all bets are off but Leadsom did say she would get rid of some aspects of red tape including the abolition of the three-crop rule but, as regards Pillar I payments in the future, this was ‘‘too detailed’’ and awaits the result of the consultation process.

However, she recognised that much of British agriculture, especially in the horticultural section, relies on access to eastern European labour but, again, there were no guarantees.

Asked during the conference how they viewed the UK political view on agriculture, only 5% of the roughly 500 people present thought that agriculture was important to the British government. Nobody suggested, never mind expected, that the current €3bn received from Brussels will be remotely matched by a similar amount from Whitehall.

There were warnings that after seven years, there is still no access for UK lamb to the States nor beef to China.

Apart from the depressing political and trade uncertainties, there were some outstanding marketing and technical presentations, including one on soil conservation and direct drilling from Irish consultant, John Geraghty.

The overriding feeling I had on leaving was that from an Irish point of view, I had no wish to turn back the clock by exiting Europe.

Quotas

I am aghast that this is being raised in some quarters here. Are we seriously saying that we would go back to where we would again be subject to quotas on how much dairy products, beef or lamb we could sell to Britain and voluntarily put ourselves in a position where we would be locked out of Europe?

Where our huge multinational sector that injects such life into the Irish economy and sees Ireland as the natural gateway to Europe’s 500 million people, as well as the Middle East and Africa, would be put in jeopardy? EU membership has seen us grow from approximately 60 of the GDP average of the EU to well over 120 and the sixth most developed country in the world on the UN developmental index. It’s time to take a real rain-check on the Irish national interest.