Derxa, I was a little taken aback too. What JR has been doing with watercourses, wildflower meadows and other landscape features to return to his grandfather's more "natural" mixed farming methods, largely abandoned during the years of the CAP, is exactly the type of land stewardship that will be rewarded under the proposed new payments scheme.
Farmers will be paid for maintaining bio-diversity and slowing drainage systems to mitigate the impacts of climate change, ie the storms that cause floods. Agricultural regeneration, rather than industrial crop production, is the objective. There are necessarily trade-offs, but the discussions need nuance. Some will say, "we need endless cheap food" and others will favour quality food sustainably produced by good husbandry more highly. IME, it's not a political L-R spectrum, more a green spectrum, but it has political implications. And moving towards a greener position is helped by escaping the strictures of the CAP and gaining freedom to frame a new farm susbsidy programme. Wherever it leads, hill farmers will continue to need some financial support because wet upland areas are never going to be suitable for large scale arable.
I believe this will be a benefit of leaving the EU, but I am not expecting a transformation on January 1st.