Farmers will lose most of their direct subsidies after Brexit and must do more to prove that any remaining support delivers public benefits, a farmers’ leader has said.

More than £2 billion a year is paid to farmers based on the amount of land they own but Minette Batters, deputy president of the National Farmers’ Union, accepted that these payments would all but disappear once Britain left the EU. The National Trust and many campaign groups have already called for an end to these “basic payments”. Ms Batters revealed that the farming industry also accepted the need for radical reform of subsidies.

In an interview with The Times, she admitted that farmers faced fierce competition for limited public funds after Brexit. The most likely