DISENTANGLING 43 years of engagement with the EU will be a monumental project, but it’s up to British businesses and advisers to seize the opportunity to shape the future.

Jeremy Moody, secretary and adviser to the Central Association of Agricultural Valuers, gave his message to the annual meeting on the morning of the referendum result.

He said EU regulations permeated every tributary of UK law – it would take years to translate that into an independent British framework. "I strongly suspect that we’ll simply have an enabling statute that says EU legislation remains in force, purely for continuity – the task is too formidable."

Trade agreements would clearly be important, but it was too early to tell which model the UK would adopt. "Our share of trade with the EU is slowly declining – it’s at 45 per cent now and on a 15-year forecast it’s at 30 per cent. But farmers are distinctively exporters to the EU and agricultural products face high import tariffs. That is an immediate issue to face up to."

A sharp drop in the value of the pound would help UK exporters and buoy agricultural commodity prices in the short-term.

"But we are heavily dependent on migrant workers. It’s very easy to make the case for highly-skilled workers, but we need people on the farms, and they would fail a visa test, so we need to look very closely at that."

Farmers relying on the Basic Payment were likely to continue to receive some support from the British government, although implementing an agricultural policy across devolved regions could be tricky.

Will Gemmill, Strutt & Parker's head of farming, said the vote would delight significant numbers of farmers as polls among them had consistently shown strong support for the leave campaign.

But he said: "At this stage, there are huge numbers of unknowns which means the impact on farm profitability is difficult to predict. It is not even clear how long it will take the UK to negotiate its way out of Europe.

"But this is also a significant opportunity to simplify the payments system so that it is simple, quick and accurate, and deal with other gold-plating of laws and regulations."

Until they have answers, farmers signing tenancy or Contract Farming Agreements would be wise to include a clause reserving the right to review the terms in view of any change in levels of support.