On Monday the NFU Council published the opinion that, though the union will not be actively ahead of June’s referendum on EU membership, senior union members believe “The interests of farmers are best served by our continuing membership of the European Union.”

However, recent polls of farmers suggest more are keen to leave the EU than would opt to remain.

In a poll of 350 farmers which accompanied Farming Online news articles in February, 50% of respondents favoured leaving the EU, whilst 34% said they would choose to remain.

Farming Online will be running further polls on the website’s home page monthly until June to gauge current feeling amongst farmers. The latest poll, which went live towards the end of last week, will remain up until Friday.

Preliminary results from the April poll show that more farmers still appear keen to leave the EU than would would opt to remain, though a significant number are still undecided. By sector, mixed and arable farmers appear marginally more minded to leave than livestock farmers.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday the latest ORB poll for the Telegraph saw support grow for the remain campaign, with 53% of respondents wishing to remain, compared to 41% who would opt to leave.

On Tuesday morning, the results from 123 responses to Farming Online's latest survey stood as follows:

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