It’s a bad advert for democracy as Holyrood and Westminster fail to offer assurances for food producers over the next few years. The toxic political mix of an SNP government in Scotland and a UK Conservative and Unionist Party means the chances of an effective working relationship are slim.

Fergus Ewing is quite right to bemoan the lack of detail from Westminster on what he can and cannot do when devising Scotland farming plans. Previously when working under the EU, we had a general framework, called the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which we all used when making up each country’s rules. However, as it stands, all the UK government says is that schemes must not distort the single market. Further guidance would be of real assistance to Mr Ewing if he is to set out detailed plans for rural support.

Michael Gove’s agriculture bill has oblique references to how future rural payment budgets between different parts of the UK might be set and touches on the ability for Westminster to set limits for different types of support. However, how this will be implemented is still very unclear leading NFUS to require legal advice and academic investigation.

This leads to fears that Defra would prevent support like the Less Favoured Areas Support Scheme and the beef calf scheme from operating, although they explicitly rejected when I asked them directly.

However, the Scottish Government should be offering more vision for future schemes and not hide behind a lack of clarity from Westminster. During previous CAP reforms support plans were discussed long before Brussels published the official legislation.

Council of Rural Advisers’ report

This week saw the publication of the Council of Rural Advisers’ report, which comes after the Agricultural Champions report so the Scottish Government should be well-versed on the needs of the rural economy in future schemes. The Scottish Government’s Simplicity and Stability consultation has been closed now for nearly two months. Whilst the nitty gritty detail might not be coming from Westminster, they have backed the budget until 2022 (or the next election) and continually said agricultural decisions are devolved.

This means we should be getting a clearer idea of what the Scottish Government plans to do once we are out of the EU. We don’t need to get the pounds and pence of what each farmer is to receive but some guidance on how schemes will look and operate would be a start.

The current noises from the Scottish Government are to back farmers to farm and to keep the current schemes running to offer some stability. It would be reassuring if we saw this in a bill through Holyrood.