Food security

At the same time that Britain is gearing up to leave the single market we are also steadily increasing our food imports. Already, half of what we eat is imported - and the imports even include crops that we grow ourselves. In 1984 our home-grown crops met almost the entire domestic demand for them - 95% were grown here and only 5% had to be imported. Today the split is 76% / 24%.

Our food trade deficit is a record £22.4 billion, and it can only get worse. The slump in the value of the pound has already pushed up import prices - every percentage devaluation of the pound means another quarter of a billion pounds on the food bill. Even the Brexit lobby admits that food is going to be more expensive post-Brexit.

However, the pound's fall is just the first shock to food prices. Already farmers are reporting that they cannot get picking and harvesting crews, so crops are left to rot in the fields. The crews are mostly made up of eastern Europeans who are willing to work hard for low pay in all weathers. The crash in the pound's value, the rise in racist behaviour by UK locals and the uncertainties around the status of EU workers in the UK makes Britain more and more unattractive to such people. Of course, if we leave the EU then the workers won't be able to come even if they wanted to.

This is already pushing food prices up in two ways: wages will have to go up to tempt local workers, and we will need to import more food to replace the crops left to rot - and those imports will cost more than the local produce.

If we fail to get a trade deal with the EU and have to fall back on WTO rules then food prices would be pushed even higher. Agricultural goods attract high tariffs under WTO rules.

Of course, WTO rules don't have to be imposed by an importer, we don't have to charge the tariffs if we don't wish to, meaning that we could keep food prices down. However if we eliminate food tariffs then other countries will undercut our farmers, driving them out of business, so instead of growing merely 50% of our own food we could end up relying almost entirely on imported food.

Even keeping the tariffs in place won't necessarily protect our farmers. They will be hit by the tariffs imposed by other countries (under WTO rules), which will make their exports uncompetitive. Further falls in the pound could counteract this, but then of course the price of imported food goes up.

The best case scenario is to retain as good a trade deal with the EU (our main market) as we possibly can. British farmers are still going to hurt, but we may be able to slow the slide into complete reliance on food grown in other countries.

The Gove scenario, on the other hand, seems to be to pay farmers to give up growing food, with him suggesting they "plant woodland" or turn their fields into "wildflower meadows or other more natural states".

Of course, his very generous salary means that he won't ever have to worry about putting food on his own table.