With all legislative hurdles cleared earlier this week, British Prime Minister Theresa May is now expected to invoke Article 50 of the European Union treaty this month and trigger the two-year Brexit process.

IFA president Joe Healy has said that the uncertainty surrounding its impact on agriculture in Ireland and in Britain was heightened by the apparent “lack of clout” of the UK’s Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Andrea Leadsom within the British government.

Healy said this point stuck out from his recent discussions with the Ulster Farmers Union in Northern Ireland and the National Farmers Union in Britain.

“Andrea Leadsom is a popular person, but it is well said that she has no friends around the cabinet table,” he said.

Healy’s comments came after George Eustice, the Minister of State for agriculture within Leadsom’s DEFRA department, clarified last week that farm payments based on the CAP system would end across the UK in 2019, with the last BPS applications accepted in May that year. It was previously thought that the UK would apply the existing CAP for its full duration until 2020.

Eustice, however, committed to the UK signing a trade agreement with the EU before turning to other partners such as cheap food producing countries.

The UK’s Secretary of State for the Department for Exiting the European Union David Davis acknowledged on Wednesday that the absence of a free trade agreement with the EU after Brexit would result in standard WTO tariffs applying, with 30% to 40% rates on dairy and meat.

He added that it would take about one year to have a full economic assessment of this scenario and said: “I think it’s not as good an outcome as a free-trade, friction-free open agreement, which is why we’re striving for that.”

On the border, secretary Davis said the UK government was considering extending the status of “authorised economic operators” already allowing companies accounting for two thirds of the UK’s external trade to declare international transactions electronically.

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Agriculture isolated as UK prepares to trigger Brexit

British prime minister Theresa May can now start the UK's formal exit from the EU at any point this month and agriculture appears to be slipping down the list of priorities.