Rural property demand was robust last year, despite the Brexit vote. Supply was generally muted, with landowners adopting a ‘wait and see’ approach to the many potential policy impacts. While CAP subsidies are secure until 2020, and a weak pound boosted GBP commodity prices, the growing unpredictability makes income diversification far more important for all but the most profitable farms. As a result, potential buyers are increasingly discriminating between farmland’s underlying commercial value, its amenity value and its development potential.

With the inevitable changes that Brexit will impose on the UK farming industry, it’s worth looking at New Zealand’s approach, where almost all farming subsidies were removed in 1984, after years of protection by a government that had set production quotas, paid generous subsidies and dictated land use.