Concerns for rural land policy have widened from a focus on food production to include many other critical values, recognised as ecosystems services. But our governance institutions have failed to reflect this. Brexit provides the UK with an opportunity to rethink the governance of rural land. This requires first an assessment of the rights and duties of land ownership. We should explore further the potential for augmented markets and payment for ecosystem services, but the public good character of ecosystem services means that the state will play a major role, through regulation, facilitation, funding and working in partnership with others.

Since the EU referendum, the UK government has pledged to deliver a ‘Green Brexit', with a profound rethink of agricultural policies in line with a ‘public money for public goods' agenda. Will Brexit finally set the UK government free to green its farming policies? To answer this question, this article looks back at the UK's Common Agricultural Policy greening record and at early proposals for future UK policy.

There is some concern in the UK policy community that Brexit may damage the contribution that the farming industry makes to social networks, social capacity, community resilience and other aspects of social and cultural capital in rural areas. There is a perception that the impact may be particularly significant in the more remote and least densely populated parts of the UK, such as rural Wales. There the agricultural system, especially extensive sheep farming, coupled with land tenure laws and local inheritance norms that kept family farms small, created a need to co-operate and share labour.

Ireland will be the EU country, after the UK itself, most affected by the economic fall-out from Brexit. Its agri-food sector, in particular, has most to fear from the consequences of a disorderly or ‘no-deal' Brexit. The increased probability of a no-deal Brexit under Boris Johnson, UK Prime Minister who has succeeded Prime Minister Theresa May, raises three issues for the Irish government. The first is whether to accept some relaxation of the conditions around the backstop in the Withdrawal Agreement if this were the price of UK approval of this Agreement.

The UK's decision to leave the European Union (EU) marks a turning point in the history of the EU. We analyse the impacts of an exit with no deal on agri-food trade using the temporary customs duties on imports announced by the British government. We focus on three product groups highly traded between the EU and the UK: wine, cheese and meat preparations. First, we show that a no-deal Brexit will put pressure on EU food producers exporting to the UK, Ireland being the most exposed. Second, impacts differ across products.

Through a series of reforms, the European Union (EU) replaced most of its trade distorting price support programmes with safety net provisions and direct payments decoupled from production. This has resulted in greater market orientation and a situation in which farmers face increased price variability. Policy now emphasises the development of business risk management (BRM) programmes, such as crop and whole farm insurance. However, for various reasons EU-wide adoption of BRM programmes and farmer uptake and use of risk instruments is below expectations.