Scottish farmers attending the Royal Highland Show hoping to learn what future support might look like or how farming would be affected by the zero carbon by 2045 pledge would be sorely disappointed.
Despite the show teaming with politicians none were offering any answers to these fundamental questions.
Instead without even the hint of a blush our Farm Minister announced he was setting up yet another talking shop to look at future farm support in Scotland.
This effectively kicks the can down the road beyond the next Scottish election in 2021 leaving farmers completely in the dark about future support and especially Less Favoured Areas (LFA) payments.
The First Minister made clear agriculture would be expected to make a significant contribution to meeting her 2045 target but no answers on how.
She did however announce she had set up yet another committee called “Just Transition Commission” to advise on a low carbon economy and Quality Meat Scotland (QMS) chairman Kate Rowell would represent the farming sector on it.
Unsurprisingly it won’t report back for two years so no answers any time soon.
Boris Johnson´s pledge to pay EU convergence money is good news in the short term for hard pressed Scots livestock farmers.
However, it fails to answer the big question on the total pot of cash for farm support post-Brexit and how will it be divided between the UK devolved countries?
The Scottish Government, NFU Scotland and its former president Jim Walker all claimed the credit for it, but the reality is that this had more to do with Boris’ desperate need to reverse his poor poll ratings with Scots voters.
Next week he will likely be crowned Tory leader and Prime Minister and with it the lull in the Brexit mad house we have all enjoyed will be shattered as it returns centre stage.
Watching the Tory leadership debate has been like watching a parallel universe as Hunt and Johnson bid up the prospect of the hardest Brexit possible.
Next week however reality will bite as Johnson discovers that self-belief, optimism and sheer willpower will not make the challenges he faces go away.
His promise to renegotiate a new deal that gets rid of the Irish backstop in the next 12 weeks strikes most commentators as mission impossible.
Boris claims that if European leaders look into his eyes and really believe he means to take the UK over the no-deal cliff they will compromise.
By talking tough he must hope Irish leader Leo Varadkar especially will crack under the threat as Ireland would face the unthinkable prospect of enforcing border controls with the UK.
On top of that swingeing UK tariffs on Irish beef and dairy exports would be “potentially disastrous” according to Irish Farm Minister Michael Creed.
However, no matter how tough Boris talks of no-deal the parliamentary arithmetic is still the same and until now the only majority is to oppose no deal so EU leaders may conclude Johnson is all bluster and can’t deliver on his threat.
For UK sheep farmers ramping up the threat to crash out could not come at a worst time.
The prospect of punishing EU tariffs and uncertainty around UK lamb exports from November 1 is bound to have a chilling effect on the autumn lamb sales.
* George Lyon is a former Liberal Democrat MEP. He is a senior consultant for Hume Brophy and sits on the board of levy body organisation AHDB.