ASK anyone what they mean when they talk about “national security” and the chances are they’ll start talking straight away about the armed forces or the spooks of the various intelligence services.

It’s only more recently that events have made mainstream the view that there are other areas of life which should be considered as being equally key to our day-to-day security.

The invasion of Ukraine most obviously put energy security to the fore, not least in terms of focusing minds on how we can keep the lights on as the ability of the North Sea to meet our longer-term needs declines.

The resulting spike in fuel and fertiliser prices and interruptions to Ukraine’s food exports also threw into sharp relief issues around our food security, whether that was the cost of inputs; fragility of supply chains; the reams of new bureaucracy associated with importing and exporting post-Brexit; or even our future biosecurity controls at our borders.

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There’s an old adage when it comes to the economy that if you can’t mine it, you have to grow it, and the north-east of Scotland is a living, breathing example of that.

Although still better recognised as the undisputed centre of our oil and gas industry, in recent years our on and offshore wind potential has seen itself being harnessed in ever greater quantities, even if too often, the real wealth generated has ended up in too few hands elsewhere.

The long-term bedrock of much of our local economy in the north-east, however, has been agriculture and fishing, which has sustained a way of thinking and an outlook as much as a way of life, and where the quality of our primary products from land and sea both remain unsurpassed.

It’s a reality of life that over the past few decades, as people have moved to the larger towns and cities, people have become separated from the direct activity of farming and fishing, even if there’s still great affinity and affection for both ways of life.

While the Royal Highland Show remains Scotland’s premier rural event, you only need to look at the turnout for local events such as the shows at New Deer, Turriff and Keith – all of which I was delighted to attend this year – to see the interest that remains in the vitality and success of rural life.

Although there’s substantial consumer interest in our food and where it comes from, there seems to be rather less concern from many of the supermarkets these days – with notable exceptions – about helping consumers who want to support Scottish producers by clearly branding their produce as such.

There also seems to be little concern as to whether they are helping producers get a fair price.

As if that weren’t bad enough, there has been little heed paid by recent UK governments about how sustainable our food-producing sectors are post-Brexit.

Nowhere is that neglect more apparent than over the UK’s recent trade deals.

The most significant to date has been the trade deal with Australia and New Zealand, which has caused significant worry over the potential displacement of Scottish produce from domestic markets by beef and lamb produced more cheaply and to lower welfare standards.

It spoke volumes about the desperation of the last Tory government to conclude trade deals at any cost that the minister who negotiated the deal later told parliament that the best clause in the treaty with Australia is the clause that gives the UK Government the right to terminate the deal with six months’ notice.

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In their determination to try and create an impression of “Global Britain” forging ahead in the world, they also signed up to membership of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade area, or CPTPP.

Like any trade deal, it brings advantages and disadvantages. But while huge concerns remain over the potential future harms, it needs a microscope to find the benefits.

With the CPTPP, the UK essentially swapped the four freedoms in Europe of goods, capital, services and people in a £15 trillion market of half a billion people right on our doorstep which took more than 40% of our exports, for a much lesser deal on the opposite side of the world with a combined economy of barely half the size, which currently takes only 8% of UK exports.

Labour are of course committed to “making Brexit work” – even though there’s no version of being outside the EU which improves upon being at the heart of it and with that, being able to build our own alliances while participating fully in the decision-making processes of the single market.

There’s a legion of perfectly reasonable folk – many of them SNP voters in the past – who voted in good faith for Brexit, who, chastened by the experience now rightly look on the endeavour as a complete flop.

Saying “we told you so” gets us nowhere with them. However, now that Brexit is “done” – and we’ve all been done by Brexit – the experience of the farming and fishing sectors shows the importance of how in building a new case for independence, EU membership has to be right at the heart of that prospectus.