I rather disagree with Simon that the general election changed nothing politically vis-à-vis the debate we had yesterday, but I think it was very disappointing that, having called the general election, Theresa May then said absolutely nothing about the Brexit terms and conditions that, supposedly, the general election was about. We are still very much in the dark about what the future might hold, although we’re beginning to have a rational debate about the virtues of changing our immigration policy.

I think that is one of the considerable threats that’s on the doorstep now, in that many of our industries are actually dependent on immigrant labour from other parts of Europe. So, for example, our tourism industry relies a lot migrant and European labour, as do our abattoirs and our food processing industry. So, we already have the challenge of fewer Europeans coming to the UK to work because of the fall in the pound, which makes the wages on offer less attractive. One of the challenges we face now is: who is going to do these jobs if they are not going to be done by other Europeans? Are we going to increase the pay in these sectors, which will attract more local people, or indeed retain the people coming from other European countries, or are we going to be happy to see these activities being exported elsewhere, whether it’s abattoirs to England or food processing to other parts of Europe? But I think that, in turn, compounds the challenges we face in relation to climate change, and the more we add on food miles, the more challenging that becomes.

Neil Hamilton is right to point out that we have a massive trade deficit in food at the moment, so there are many opportunities for diversifying. However, the huge dislocation of current agricultural patterns could be needed if we’re suddenly going to be having tariffs imposed on us for entry into the single market, which will have a huge and revolutionary impact on, for example, our lamb industry, where 30 per cent of the product is exported to Europe. Tariffs would kill off that business overnight.

So, it is true that whilst the CAP has guaranteed the production of food after the second world war, it hasn’t exactly delivered the sort of healthy, local food industry that certainly I would envisage that we would want, to ensure that we have a thriving agricultural sector that benefits our rural communities, but also benefits the population at large. Yes, everybody has to buy food, but what many people buy at the moment would have difficulty passing the trade description Act as being food. Quite how we’ve allowed the food processors and the distributors to dress up their products in the drive for profit at any price, whilst those who actually produce the food have really not been in the driving seat, and we’ve really lost sight of the need to nourish our nation.

The Welsh Government has a key role to play through its food procurement strategy. The health of the nation relies on a radical change in our diet. Too many people never eat fresh fruit and vegetables, and if we’re not serving them in schools and hospitals, we should hardly be surprised. We have much to learn from our European partners, who take pride in their local food culture in a way that many of us fail to do. There are enormous opportunities for us here to ensure that we have a Welsh agriculture that is of cultural and social significance, beyond the numbers employed or the capital invested.

We do have some pioneering food and farming businesses here in Wales and we need to continue to develop them. For example, Puffin Produce, which now produces nearly all the potatoes sold in all our supermarkets across Wales, as well as an increasing number of other vegetables as well and a few items of fruit, is a completely excellent model for the future. But, diversification has got to be on farmers’ agendas when there’s such a huge question mark over some of the things they currently rely on exporting. Many farmers say this isn’t possible because of our weather, but I challenge that business-as-usual approach, because water is the new gold and we have plenty of it, whereas the eastern part of Britain faces serious drought. We cannot go on simply extracting water from underground reservoirs to continue in an unsustainable way. So, I think there are many other ways in which we could see a diversification of our food industry, as well as an improvement in the health of our nation, as we move forward in this rather unknown landscape of the post-Brexit world.