Many businesses have learned to their cost the truth of the old adage about going woke being the route to going broke.

Pats on the back might feel good, but all too often they do not translate into sales and profits. Jaguar Land Rover as a once world beating car maker is seemingly paying the price in sales for its decision to go 100 per cent electric with Jaguar cars; there are plenty of less dramatic examples, not least in food where efforts to follow trends fail to deliver success, because the scale and growth of vegetarianism and vegan diets is massively over-estimated. Politicians at Westminster, but worryingly also at Stormont, seems to have lost all sight of the importance of agriculture. They ignore its role as the economic driver of rural areas, the foundation of national food security and as a big employer in areas where other job opportunities are limited. Political thinking is now dominated by a green vision they believe will please voters and help them get re-elected or stay in power. This looks good in the media, but there is scant evidence it ultimately impresses voters. It is instead a sleight of hand worthy of the con merchants tempting the unwary with the old three card trick. Policy is focussed on claims around green outcomes and the illusion that this is an effective way to tackle global climate change. The big 'but' in this approach is that the demand for cheap food has not altered; indeed with the onward march of inflation this pressure is getting worse. What the anti-food production approach by politicians does is export the problem to make us feel better. The illusion then is that successive governments have been at the cutting edge on progress against climate change. In reality what we are doing is exporting the problem to countries with poorer standards; they lack the financial luxury of being able to impose techniques claimed to deliver environmental outcomes. We then import poorer quality food that just about meets basic standards, which has been produced with less care for the environment. At the same time we encourage farmers here to be less productive when it comes to food production. Thus the policy delivers nothing to alleviate climate change or to help the economy here. There has always been an assumption that the CAP is a bad model and one that is hard to justify. However this is an area in Europe where the views of the public are more sympathetic to farmers than many politicians or the media. This has been confirmed by a special Eurobarometer survey carried out by the European Commission as the debate continues about reshaping the CAP. This found that a truly impressive 95 per cent of people believe agriculture and rural areas are important to Europe's future. Perhaps even more surprisingly, half of those questioned in the survey believed more EU funding should go to farming over the next decade. The survey result was based on 47,000 people being questioned across all 27 member states. The survey confirmed a firm belief that support for agriculture was key to delivery on issues such as climate change, with food security edging even this as a priority for people in the years ahead.

For farmers, who are sadly now used to being on the receiving end of criticism for the job they do, this is an enormous psychological boost.

It confirms that people in general have more common sense about what is important than many politicians. There is no reason to be apologetic about farm support or to believe it cannot be based around food production being the best way to deliver for consumers and the environment. It would be good if that EU survey were replicated here, either by the devolved administrations or the government at Westminster. We have a right and a need in agriculture to know whether the UK is out of step with the opinions of people across 27 EU member states. These are our nearest neighbours and their agriculture model is very similar to our own. The other side of this coin is that we need to know if politicians are out of step over agriculture with the people who put them into power and who, so far as Northern Ireland is concerned, will decide next May whether they remain in power after the Assembly election.