NFU Cymru seeks food security commitment at Royal Welsh Show

The Welsh government is being urged to embed commitments on food security in its new agriculture bill this autumn after what has been described as its “glaring omission” from draft legislation.

The government’s policy proposals set out in its white paper on agriculture focus on environmental outcomes from farm-level interventions.

But NFU Cymru president Aled Jones said this was very different from a policy that underpinned food production and security.

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Speaking at the Royal Welsh Showground, near Builth Wells, Powys, on Sunday 17 July, Mr Jones said the union would lobby for their inclusion in the Agriculture (Wales) Bill before it is published this autumn.

“The bill must include mechanisms to ensure levels of domestic food production are assessed, maintained and enhanced alongside climate, biodiversity and broader environmental objectives, not be in conflict with them,” said Mr Jones.

He wants to see an explicit reference to food security within the outcomes expected from the upcoming Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS), including powers that sanction funding to achieve these.

Sri Lankan unrest

Mr Jones said current civil unrest in Sri Lanka, in part a result of political intervention in food policies, should serve as a reminder to the government that access to safe, high-quality and affordable food is critical.

“There has never been, or ever will be, a time to experiment with food production systems,” he said.

Wales’ rural affairs minister responded by insisting that the government took the issue of food security “very seriously”.

Lesley Griffiths said it was one of the reasons, in conjunction with assessing the effects of recent trade deals, for the year-long delay in the publishing the bill.

“We are going to take a bit more time around that,” she said during a press briefing ahead of the show. “It is something we are looking at within the agriculture bill and is why it has taken a little longer to introduce.”

The minister insisted that food production was at the heart of the SFS, since farmers had to be “active” to qualify for payments.

Tree-planting targets

She said she could not make a pledge on the level of payments, since she did not know what her budget allocation from the UK government would be.

She also needed to see the economic analysis and modelling around the SFS proposals before deciding what funding was needed for individual measures.

But Ms Griffiths said she did not expect to have to relent on the requirement for every farm in Wales to have 10% tree cover. This, she said, was the government’s preference for achieving its target of planting 43,000ha of trees by 2030, instead of large-scale planting schemes.