The twin tests of Brexit and maintaining Scotland’s high-quality food production should not detract from the biggest challenge of our time – halting climate change.

This is according to Mark Tennant, chairman of Scottish Land and Estates (SLE), which represents rural businesses, said serious choices of priorities lie ahead both for government and food producers as the clock ticks towards the EU trade deal deadline in January.

Tennant was speaking at SLE’s annual conference. He said it was now incumbent on farming businesses and land managers to ‘go further and go faster’ in their contributions to combating carbon emissions.

“Yet, as hard as these challenges are, we must not take our focus away from climate change – and it is incumbent on farmers, land managers and estates to continue to help Scotland meet its targets in this area.

“As we transition from the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), there is an opportunity to enact a huge change in how we deliver from our land.

Farmers facing one of their toughest years in recent memory have received little comfort this week from a usually reliable ally: the Conservative party.

Their pleas to the government to enshrine in law a commitment to the UK’s high standards of food safety and animal welfare were ignored. In a long and impassioned debate in the House of Commons on Monday, amendments to the agriculture bill that had almost universal backing from farming leaders were defeated, steamrollered under the government’s 80-strong majority.

The stakes could scarcely be higher: British farmers are worried that post-Brexit trade bills with the US and other countries will allow the import of food and agricultural products that are currently banned under EU regulations. Produced to a lower standard than the UK mandates, these foods would undercut British produce – yet if the UK were to lower its own standards, the export route for British food to its biggest market, Europe, would be blocked.

They have been arguing, alongside food and environmental campaigners, for legal status to be given to UK standards, which would prevent any future deals that undercut them.