August is the quiet month of the year in Brussels, when officials leave the city for the month-long summer break. Politics come to a halt and decisions are avoided, making it a time to look back in school report form at what has been achieved and what lies ahead.

This year this has an added twist. We have a new European parliament and by October it will have approved a new European Commission. That may reflect a drift to the right in many member states. For now the current commissioners are still in office and determined to ensure the legacy of their five-year terms is seen in a positive light.

The departing EU farm commissioner, Poland's Janusz Wojciechowski, has been technically efficient but has not made a mark as a reforming or dynamic commissioner. He kept the ship afloat and avoided the divisions that flowed from the wider EU policy of helping Ukraine by giving it largely tariff free access to European agricultural markets.

This was strategically important, but it caused strains, not least in the member states bordering Ukraine. Inevitably the Brussels answer was money to offset income losses on farms, but this hid rather than helped drive a long term solution. He did however secure the funding needed for that stopgap measure and beyond that defended the CAP and its budget through some difficult times.

These came from Covid and Brexit implementation fallouts, inflation and the pressure on the EU to curb spending. He will however be remembered as a technocrat, like many others long forgotten that held that post. Reforming or visionary he was not, and agriculture will be hoping a stronger commissioner emerges in the autumn.

As to detail Brussels deserves credit – a lot of credit – for how it managed the farm protests of the early months of 2024. These were massive, politically charged and raised issues about the urban/rural divide in Europe. They confirmed that despite the commitment in the original EEC's founding Treaty of Rome to tackle this problem little has been achieved.

Successive rural development policies have not delivered and the CAP has become more bureaucratic and focussed on a green agenda rather than food production. It was the Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen who personally responded to the protests.

She poured oil on very troubled waters, with short term CAP simplification as a down payment on more fundamental reform. She made the right comments on food security and used key occasions, including her State of the Union address to praise farmers for how they had maintained food supplies through difficult times. This was a big psychological boost for agriculture and it is why the industry is pleased she will remain president of the new Commission.

Agriculture as the foundation of the European food industry has been a big financial success for the eurozone economy. Exports have boomed through difficult times globally and the result has been a steady growth in an impressively positive balance of trade gap between exports and imports.

More needs to be done in the area of trade to ensure imports come closer to meeting EU standards, but by any economic standards farming and food are success stories – and recognised as such – for the eurozone. That alone is an achievement worth celebrating.

If trade goes on the success side of the balance sheet, it is offset by failures to recognise that much of the EU's green thinking is flawed. Despite their political demise in the European parliament elections green policies still dominate thinking. The Commission term ended with no progress on gene editing, or in euro-speak novel genomic techniques, legislation.

This should have been easy, but it became bogged down over minor issues and the big picture was lost, to the delight of those who oppose all technology in agriculture. The European Commission is still sticking to its unrealistic plans to have a third of farm land organic by the early 2030s. This is despite evidence that food price inflation changed how consumers view all premium products, not least organic food.

Despite the loss of member states support for nature restoration legislation Brussels has yet to admit this is dead in the water and either kill it off or radically change the thinking behind the policy. Come September we will be in a new Brussels year with a new Commission. The school report line remains 'must do better' for agriculture.