The Production of Fruit and Vegetables

Part of 3. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Energy, Planning and Rural Affairs – in the Senedd at 3:44 pm on 11 December 2018.

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Photo of Lesley Griffiths Lesley Griffiths Labour 3:44, 11 December 2018

Thank you. You referred to the possibility of a 'no deal' Brexit, and, certainly, we are doing a great deal of work around food supplies. The Welsh Government is a member of the food chain emergency liaison group that has been convened by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, because I think we do recognise there may be a more limited choice of fresh fruit and vegetables because of possible disruption to imports from the EU.

I think horticulture is one area where we do have opportunities to make some real progress. It was very interesting to hear about the piece of work you referred to, and Adam—I would be very interested in hearing more about that. What we do within our food and drink action plan, the current one and the one that we're currently bringing forward to support the one that we've had, in ensuring that our food and drink—. I think there are very ambitious targets within that, and as you know, we've already reached the 2020 target. So, what we want to do within that is support horticultural growers to make sure that they can play their part, and one of our priorities is to support that particular industry and increase horticultural crop production by 25 per cent. That would, then, allow much greater self-sufficiency.