<p>The Fruit and Vegetable Deficit in Wales</p>

Part of 2. 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Environment and Rural Affairs – in the Senedd at 1:37 pm on 24 May 2017.

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Photo of Jenny Rathbone Jenny Rathbone Labour 1:37, 24 May 2017

I hope we’re not going to wait until Brexit before doing something about this because there are lots of things that the Government could be doing now. One is that we could be planting more fruit trees because we need to plant more trees generally and, if we have fruit trees, then their produce is available. But, more strategically, I wondered if we could have a much more urgent approach to our public procurement policy around food, in particular to enable us to follow the lead of Flintshire, which is adopting the ‘Food for Life’ certification, which requires schools to produce 75 per cent of their dishes freshly produced. That would obviously stimulate the horticulture industry to provide the vegetables and fruit that schools would need. The same would apply to hospitals and other public buildings. We have this approach here in our canteen in the Senedd. Surely, we can extend it to all our children.