The agricultural sector stands to be among the major beneficiaries of United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union.

Leaving the European Union and its Customs Union is a precondition for the UK to become a leader in global free trade, boosting our exports and lowering prices for all consumers. It is estimated that prices will be reduced overall by around 8%, with the price of food dropping by around 10%. The Prime Minister has signalled that we shall be leaving the EU’s internal market, and given the UK’s substantial trade deficit with the EU, it is vital to establish reciprocal free trade arrangements with it. It is also essential that agriculture, food and drink are prioritised in negotiating future trade deals with the rest of the world.

Abandoning the Common Agricultural Policy also provides an opportunity for far-reaching subsidy reform, with help for farmers at home going hand in hand with expanding global trade. The CAP was conceived as a regime of subsidised food production and employment protection, but since the reforms of Raymond MacSharry and then Franz Fischler as Agriculture Commissioners, the subsidies have ceased to be tied to food production. The policy has moved to a regime of area payments which are becoming hard to justify to the public and increasingly untenable politically. It is now evolving into a policy designed to impose common environmental outcomes on the vast geographic and environmental area which the member states encompass. A uniform approach across a diverse continent is at best deeply unsuitable and at worst actively damaging to local environments. CAP funding now accounts for 42% of the EU budget, and is estimated to cost £7.65 per week to family food bills, or £398 per household per year.

The great tragedy is that the CAP has failed not only as a policy for food production – the UK’s selfsufficiency rate of 61% in 2015 was 1% lower than in 2014, but 13% lower than 20 years ago – and is now also failing as an environmental policy.

The first step towards a new policy must be to nationalise the entire acquis communautaire purely as an interim measure to ensure full continuity during the transition followed by a process of amendment. The Government must then perform a full study of all the relevant legislation and consider all of the overarching global conventions which have been historically misinterpreted by the EU. The crucial outcome, however, must be that Parliament regains its full control to repeal, amend, or strengthen the existing body of law. A UK Agriculture Bill should be taken through Parliament to establish a new UK rural policy.

There is great debate in rural areas about the continuance of current farming subsidies after Brexit and their nature. In some ways, however, this is akin to looking through a telescope from the wrong end. Leaving the Customs Union and lowering the prices of food, clothing and industrial materials benefits all consumers, particularly the most disadvantaged, many of whom live in rural areas. That, therefore, should be the key priority. It is vital to recognise at the same time, however, that for all the benefits to all consumers, such a change may create potential problems for the much smaller proportion of people in the agricultural sector which must be addressed.

A new, ambitious rural policy must have clear priorities to

• Grow the rural economy
• Improve the environment
• Protect the country from animal diseases
• Protect the country from plant diseases

as part of an integrated, flexible approach.

The first priority in growing the rural economy must be to increase food production. By freeing farmers of overbearing regulation and bureaucracy and allowing them to embrace the latest technologies, certain areas of the UK will undoubtedly remain globally competitive even in the absence of subsidies. There are clear lessons to be learnt from the policy adopted by New Zealand in the 1980s, which moved away from subsidies as a prerequisite for forging new trade deals and demonstrated that food production can increase when farmers are given the freedom to react to the market.

It is important to remember that 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 thus have every confidence that the food producing areas of the country will continue to prosper once released from the constraints of the CAP and encouraged to embrace the latest technologies.

Whilst this approach will be suitable for some areas, there will be others – including mountainous regions and national parks – which are unable to remain competitive against global producers and for which food production is inadequate as the sole means of generating income. While poultry farming is flourishing, for instance, and requires no subsidies, hillside livestock farming will need some sort of support maintained. Rather than replicate the subsidies of the CAP, however, there is now scope to reward farmers in a far more tailored way for their environmental and conservation role than the present arrangements allow. In Switzerland, for instance, Alpine farmers are supported for the work they do in maintaining the iconic landscape and a similar scheme could be implemented here. Our farming activity creates and nurtures a rural environment which sustains a £30 billion tourism industry, and payments could be made for such services as maintaining natural habitats, the provision of clean water and flood defences.

The constraints placed upon us from Brussels have been burdensome. We have been prevented from working with like-minded countries to tackle plant and animal disease and prevented from reaching trade agreements with countries which would buy our produce. We have, in short, been denied the global leadership role which would be in our best interests and those of our allies. We can now retake our full seat on the world bodies that determine global regulation – the WTO, the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), the Codex Alimentarius Commission and the International Plant Protection Convention – regaining both a right to vote and a right to initiate new standards and propose amendments to existing ones.

The EU has abjectly failed to keep pace with advances in agricultural technology, instead single-mindedly pursuing an overly-prescriptive interpretation of the ‘Precautionary Principle’ more influenced by the emotions of vocal activists than by scientific evidence and advice. To replace this, the Government must now implement the ‘Innovation Principle’, dedicated to facilitating and stimulating evidence-led scientific development, and ensuring that policy makers are forced to consider whether their decisions might impede that progress.

Such a policy can invigorate the profitability and competitiveness of British farming while improving the environment, and seek to foster, maintain, and further our trading agreements and partnerships across the world.