6. Will the Minister make a statement on the importance of public subsidies to Welsh farmers? OAQ(5)0009(ERA)

Yes. Common agriculture policy payments of £350 million each year play a vitally important role in maintaining the viability of Welsh farms and of realising the Welsh Government and the industry’s shared vision of a prosperous and resilient agricultural industry in Wales.

I’m sure the Minister will agree with me that subsidy has been an important element in farmers’ incomes throughout my entire lifetime, both before we went into the common market, as we then called it, and of course since, and that if the country votes tomorrow to leave, then public subsidies will continue at least at their present level because we pay in £2 to get only £1 back. We had a perfectly good system of subsidy based on deficiency payments before 1973, which supported farm incomes whilst having cheap food for the people.

I think the Member’s comments are all supposition.

Can I introduce you to some facts, Minister? Can I refer you to an article in the ‘Agricultural History Review’, entitled ‘Measuring Regional Variation in Farm Support: Wales and the UK, 1947-72’? The conclusion of this article was this: previous pre-EU farm subsidies penalised Wales when farm size was smaller on average than in the UK as a whole. The fact is that the Welsh farmer has more in common with farmers throughout the rest of the EU than he or she has with a bunch of right-wing privatising Tories who are only interested in self-aggrandisement and their own self-promotion. It is better for the Welsh farmer to stay in the EU. That is the conclusion from the president of the National Farmers Union today, here in this Assembly, and also the Farmers Union of Wales. I hope that we, in the last 24 hours, will work hard to provide the assurances that the farming community needs that we will look after their interests, but as part of a reformed European Union.

I absolutely agree with the Member. I was at the event with the NFU and I’ve met with both the NFU and the FUW, who have sent out a very positive message to their members that they should vote to remain in the EU tomorrow. We know that the single market is absolutely critical to our farming and food sectors and I think that the risks associated with the potential exit are significant. We really don’t know, and what we are hearing from some politicians, as I say, is just supposition and we know that 81 per cent of the profit of Welsh farming businesses is derived from the EU subsidy payments that they receive.

Cabinet Secretary, the previous Welsh Government’s decision to move to the 15 per cent modulation rate has made it much tougher for some Welsh farmers to compete in the marketplace against food producers from other countries. Given these circumstances, what is the Welsh Government doing specifically to ensure that farmers get the opportunity to directly access these funds under the rural development plan, to offset the loss of earnings under pillar 1?

Well, actually, you know, I’m just in the first month of the portfolio and I think they’re actually getting back more than the 15 per cent. We are in the process of setting up the small grants scheme and the farmers are very happy with what we’re doing in relation to that.