IT’S a bold statement to make, but I firmly believe that there is no sector more important than that of food and drink in relation to what happens in the wake of our exit from the EU. The effects will be felt right across our entire society if it fails.

I made that statement on Monday evening at the discussion panel titled Food Farming and The Rural Economy Post Brexit, and I fully expected to be challenged vigorously as a result.

I wasn’t. People know the value of this industry, not just as an economic powerhouse in terms of the number of people it employs, or the financial prosperity it brings into the country.

The bigger issue is what it means to each and every one of us as consumers. We all eat, we all drink water and we all breath air. We have a fantastically clean safe environment, a beautiful landscape and some of the finest food with the highest welfare standards anywhere in the world.

What brought this into even sharper focus at the discussion was the anger, and dare I say it fear, from a beef farmer who believes that the only way he can survive if Brexit negotiations continue in their present trajectory is to go down the American route of hormone injecting his cattle. He doesn’t want to do it, but desperately asks what choice will he have to be able to survive.

That’s a frightening prospect for us all, if farmers are so scared for their future that they would consider rolling back decades of hard work to gain the fantastic reputation we have.

The response from the room was immediate shock, and James Withers, chief executive of Scotland Food and Drink, summed it up perfectly by saying he was alarmed to hear that, and warned against the proverbial race to the bottom in food standards.

That race to the bottom will ultimately lead to economic ruin for many farmers, but more critically from a societal point of view, what’s at stake is the quality standards of food that is available for us as consumers.

What this highlights is that we are coming to an end game, we are coming to decision time and what we see are the priorities for how we wish to live and function as a country.

The reason I set this conference up, bringing together the president of the National Farmers Union of Scotland Andrew McCornick, Scotland Food and Drink CEO James Withers, Graham’s Family Dairies MD Robert Graham and myself, was to get an understanding of where we are, and where we want to go. How we get there, that’s the real challenge.

In these situations normally we will have a room full of farmers, or a room full of activists from whichever group they represent, or a room full of experts all giving their opinions. What that gives you is echo chambers of no value.

What we had on Monday was consumers, farmers and industry leaders, all talking to each other, hearing views directly from their customers or suppliers and getting an understanding from all sides. This was one of my driving ambitions when setting up Perth Farmers Market in 1999, and its even more important now.

The message was very clear: our Scotland brand matters, as does all that it stands for – quality, provenance, welfare standards. These are all valuable selling points. Our desire for clean, safe food matters, so the race to the bottom must be avoided at all costs. Our profitability as farmers matter, because without that none of the above will.

The ambition 2030 programme set out by Scotland Food and Drink wants to make the sector our biggest industry, generating £30 billion of turnover, employing a million people by 2030.

Just think about that number for a second. Almost a fifth of the entire population employed in the most dynamic, driven, ambitious industry in the country. That prospect excites me enormously.

The question for us all now, is how do we do it?

Monday evening was the starting point, but the conversation must move on to what’s the next step? We must stop the farmer and fisherman-bashing, we must choose to want a vibrant, prosperous food and drink industry, and we must map out how we get behind it to make it happen.

We must protect our brand, we must be a good food nation, we must generate new markets, riding on the coat tails of salmon and whisky and we must ensure that everyone gets a fair share of the benefits.

Whether that’s profitable returns to primary producers and everyone in the supply chain, or consumers with affordable clean, safe, brilliant-tasting food from right here at home, everyone has to know and feel they have a vested interest.

It’s time to continue it all over the country. If we want to be independent, we have to act like we are. That involves having vibrant, self-sufficient food and drink at the heart of their promise to themselves.