It’s tough being a farmer. This is something farmers like to tell us and they have been making to me since I became an MP.

However, I think that it is tougher now that it has been for a very long time.

We are on the point of triggering article 50 leading to our departure from the EU and we are getting no clue what the government has in store for farmers. Farmers have depended for many years on support from the EU to make a reasonable income. Without these payments even more farmers than we see currently would simply sell up and get out of farming. This is why the year long delay many farmers have faced in their payments from the Rural Payments Agency has been such an issue.

The government has committed to continuing to pay farmers at the same level up until 2020. But that is less than three years away now - the average cow coming into milk now will still be producing when this commitment runs out. Asking a farmer to make an investment decision against that sort of uncertainty is just unreasonable particularly when the person doing the asking is our current agriculture minister, Andrea Leadsom.

During the debate in the lead-up to the Euro referendum Mrs Leadsom was one of the key people telling us that leaving the EU would allow us to take back control in our country. Well, now she “controls” a significant government department and we are still waiting for her to tell us what “taking back control” will mean for our farmers. What is her vision for the farming industry as we move towards leaving the EU?

It is not just an issue of maintaining the financial support they get currently. Three quarters of our farming exports go to Europe and just under a quarter of the people who work in agriculture come from the EU - the connections between the EU and farming go very deep indeed.

On top of all this we are about to enter into a massive round of trade negotiations. Everyone says they want the best deal we can get but we will have to make trade-offs between those things we want to be able to export freely, which seem to be banking and cars at the moment, and the things that other countries want to be able to export freely to us.

I am really scared that in our negotiations with President Trump the trade-off we will be faced with if we want to be able to sell our financial services to Americans is that they are able to freely sell their hormone-riddled beef and chlorine-washed chickens over here. The only possible outcome for this would be that our British foodstuffs get dragged down to the level of the American ones. That is no good for us, for our farmers or for our farm animals.

Come on, Mrs Leadsom. Tell us where you want farming to head over the coming years.

TIM FARRON