3. What is the Welsh Government doing to encourage and support smallholders in Wales? OAQ54136

I thank the Member for that question. Smallholders play an important role in caring for our landscape and contributing to our economy. They are eligible for our Farming Connect advice service, as well as the basic payment scheme and a range of other Welsh Government support, such as the farm business grant.

Can I thank the First Minister for that answer? No doubt he will want to join with me in congratulating the Glamorgan Smallholders, who held an outstanding exhibition in the Senedd last week, displaying the whole range of their work and how innovative it was, and also, I think, for the first time, Llywydd—no doubt with your permission—brought some animals onto the estate. Many Members went along and saw them alongside the Pierhead.

I think it's really important to remember what an essential part of the agricultural economy that smallholders are, and the need for the Government to consult with them and recognise their innovation, and involve them in the development of policies, especially post Brexit. You did refer to the basic payment scheme. Of course, that is set at a minimum size of 5 hectares or 12.4 acres in Wales. That's something, as we move away to recognising public goods, it may be appropriate to encourage smallholders to provide services like school visits and other environmental impacts that they can make as well. This is a sector we should not forget. It's really, really important to the flourishing of rural life.

I thank David Melding for that and congratulate him on sponsoring the Glamorgan Smallholders event last week. I, myself, attended some previous events that they have held here, and they are an opportunity, always, to showcase Welsh farming, Welsh food, and the commitment that the sector has to the highest standards. It was good to see that there were animals brought here, as well, from Glamorgan—animals from other parts of Wales are no doubt available, Llywydd, as well, to visit us here. But we want to go on as a Government supporting Welsh smallholders.

The Royal Welsh Agricultural Society has a smallholding and countryside festival, which the Welsh Government helps to sponsor, and the chief vet and others attended there. Farming Connect offers a series of events called 'Living off 10 acres', which are very specifically aimed at the smallholding sector. While smallholders do have to have 5 hectares as a minimum size to qualify for the basic payment scheme, there is no size limitation on the farm business grant here in Wales, and we encourage smallholders who are interested in diversification, in providing public goods of the sort that David Melding described, to apply for that grant so that we can go on helping them in innovation and diversification.

The majority of smallholdings are family-run businesses, which need to supplement their income with other sources such as tourism. They make a great contribution to our rural economies. They also tend to sell locally, reducing food miles and benefiting our environment. To my mind, the supply and consumption of home-grown food closer to home makes perfect sense. First Minister, what can your Government do to encourage more local food production?

Llywydd, let me agree with what the Member has said about the importance of smallholdings to their local economies; the way in which diversification has always had to be part of what a smallholding owner has to think of, because by itself it's unlikely to be able to support a family. In addition to the things that I mentioned in my answer to David Melding, Farming Connect will hold an innovation and diversification show on 26 September this year. It will be an opportunity to bring smallholders from across Wales together. There will undoubtedly there be a focus on food production and local food production, and to support the sector in the efforts that it makes to provide those products that are saleable locally but often have a market further afield as well.

Could I also commend David on an excellent event, hosting the Glamorgan Smallholders association? We look forward to it coming back next year bigger and better again. But could I ask the First Minister: what's his vision, both for smallholders and other land managers in a post-Brexit scenario? It was only a few years ago that we marked the fiftieth anniversary of the common agricultural policy, and that was going to change whether we stayed in the EU or not, but now we're in a very different perspective. So, going forward, can he paint that vision about how different that future is in a post-Brexit scenario, and what opportunities, if there are, there would be for a different type of land management?

I thank Huw Irranca-Davies for that. I had the opportunity to speak at the annual general meeting of the Farmers Union of Wales last week in Aberystwyth, and this was exactly the point of discussion at that AGM. If the UK leaves the European Union, then direct subsidies under the CAP will cease, and that's why so much effort has been made in Wales, through 'Brexit and our land', to begin to take our future into our own hands. We had a fantastic response to that consultation, over 12,000 responses to it, and we are about to publish our successor set of proposals in which we will learn from that consultation and put forward proposals for sustainable farming in which sustainable food production and sustainable use of the land, environmental stewardship of the land, come together in order to provide that sustainable future. I look forward to further conversations with farming interests and other land managers in forestry and so on to find ways in which, provided we have the resources here in Wales the other side of the CAP, and we're committed to using those resources to go on supporting rural and agricultural communities, to do so in a way that rewards active farmers for the work they do in food production, but also for the work they do in securing public goods for which the public is prepared to make an investment.