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Last year, The Mail on Sunday ran a major campaign to save this country's family farms from the very real threat of trade deals which would have brought imports of cheaply produced, substandard food into this country.
More than a million people signed a petition to say this would never be acceptable. And, as a result, the Government promised to create a commission charged with scrutinising new trade deals and their impact on the farming industry.
But one year later, I am increasingly concerned. Once again, there is a cloud looming over our farmers, our landscapes and our ability to produce our own food on these islands.
The United Kingdom is currently in trade negotiations with a number of major agricultural producers, including Australia, New Zealand and the United States of America. Some of these talks have reached a crucial stage.
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And it's clear that negotiators from Australia and New Zealand are sticking firm to their hardline demands for the complete removal of tariffs on all their exports to the UK.
This would make life unbearable for small British family farms, which, remember, must respect British laws governing high farm standards.
It will be all but impossible to compete with vast volumes of imports from the southern hemisphere produced in a very different manner.
Not unless we lower our standards to compete with them - and turn our backs on the iconic British countryside.
Surely no one can want our green and pleasant land to become like the Australian Outback or the American dust bowl.
I have huge admiration for farmers across the world, not least our cousins in Australia and New Zealand.
But their farms are very different to ours and on a very different scale. And were we to throw our doors wide open to their exports, the stark differences in the way we operate would spell major trouble.
Last month, I was delighted to join our Secretary of State for International Trade, Liz Truss, at Mowbray Park Farm, which raises livestock near Ripon in Yorkshire.
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I'm sure that she felt proud to be there, and that she paused for a moment, as I did, to take in the stunning views of rolling hills and green pastures.
Uniquely suited to grass-fed, high-quality beef and lamb, this landscape is what makes British farming special and quite different to livestock rearing elsewhere in the world. It is precious.
Let me be clear - I am not against free trade, so long as that trade is fair. Today, we in the UK enjoy some of the most affordable food in the world, yet many producers barely earn a livelihood.
The Government says it wants to 'level up' Britain. But this can never be achieved by throwing our family farms under the bus.
The plain truth is this: removing tariffs for vast, unmanageable volumes of Australian beef or New Zealand lamb - or, God forbid, allowing zero tariffs on all their produce - could spell the end.
The only way that UK farmers could compete is by lowering our own standards. Which in turn means waving goodbye to the green undulations of North Yorkshire, speckled with grazing cattle and sheep, and saying hello to massive feed lots and soulless ranches processing tens of thousands of cattle at a time.
It means goodbye to years of hard work reducing the amount of antibiotics we use (the UK is a world leader in tackling antimicrobial resistance).
And it means trying to compete with countries that send live cattle thousands of miles over land and overseas at precisely the moment our Government is preparing to ban such transports over the 20-mile stretch of the Channel.
It would make a mockery of our ambition to make British farming the gold standard for climate-friendly and high-welfare food production.
I'm sure I'm not alone in believing it's complete hypocrisy to speak about raising standards, about being global leaders in animal welfare, while eagerly signing trade deals which catastrophically undermine those very goals.
I don't want to see British farming vanishing. And, if the response to The Mail on Sunday's campaign is anything to go by, neither do you.
That's why it's so important we support our Government's stated objectives: trade deals 'should secure a broad reduction of tariffs while taking into account UK product sensitivities, in particular for agriculture'.
Liz Truss has already shown how this can be done, making a fantastic job of securing trade deals with countries like Japan, who have sensibly balanced more access for UK farm produce with limits that safeguard their own farmers. It's a model we should pursue ourselves.
By all means, agree to manageable imports of Australian beef and New Zealand lamb - if we get something in return.
But there should be no question of eliminating tariffs altogether in sensitive sectors like these at any point, not now, and not in the years to come. Our Government owes it to the British people to get these deals right.
I hope that Liz Truss's visit to Mowbray Park stiffened her resolve as the talks reach a critical stage - and as British negotiators fight our corner.
The tragic alternative is the slow, withering death of family farms throughout the four nations of these isles.
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