Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:05 pm on 25 June 2019.
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.