I’m often amazed by how woolly the language used by groups like the National Farmers’ Union really is. Wacky ideas like “food security” (as if there is any conceivable scenario where Britain will be laid siege to by U-Boats) and farmers having some special “stewards of the countryside” connection to the land obscure the important facts. Taxpayers and consumers are rarely mentioned at all. Plain speaking about the costs and benefits of our current system is needed so we can think about what we’re paying for, what we’re getting, and how we can make sure taxpayers aren’t being stuck with a bill for something they don’t want or need.

This matters because after we leave the EU we’ll have to come up with our own agriculture policy, replacing the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy. (I will not discuss the Common External Tariff here for the sake of space.) Although agriculture is a small part of the economy, making up just 0.6% of gross value added, its environmental impact is quite important and the sector receives a large amount of money from the state – about £5bn every year.

Here’s the real story of the week: productivity in Britain is only 1.4% higher now than it was ten years ago, so the public finances are even more of a mess than we thought. The lighter blue line in the chart below shows how we’ve done; the dotted yellow line shows the 1997-2007 trend.