6. Statement by the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs: Sustainable Farming and our Land

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:35 pm on 9 July 2019.

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Photo of Joyce Watson Joyce Watson Labour 5:35, 9 July 2019

I welcome the statement today, and clearly I won't be in agreement with everything everybody has said, but I am in agreement with your statement. I'm really pleased that we're now valuing, within this statement, the environment, which the market currently doesn't. I think there's a whole job that can be done here, and I want to make it clear that there is no doubt that the farmers and the producers at the moment do produce good-quality goods, whether that's food or other items, on their farms. And that is promoted through organisations like Hybu Cig Cymru, for example, and I think if we're moving into a new scheme, there's a real opportunity not to just talk about promoting quality goods, but about promoting quality land-managed goods. Because I think there's a whole conversation that's changing now. People do want to know about provenance and we're very good at that, that's clear, but they also want to know not just where the food has come from, but they want to know how it's been grown. They're quite interested in the impact of those goods and services that they're buying on the climate, so I think we need a whole change of conversation around that. That would be a really, really good news story for Welsh farmers, because it isn't the case necessarily that that's not happening already. But we need to change the way that we sell that, and I think in order to do that, bringing people along with us is obviously critically important. That's where I agree with everybody here, and you clearly have recognised that in this statement.

But I think, whilst we bring along the people who are already engaged in farming or land management, it's also an opportunity to have discussions more widely and recognise expertise that currently might not be in the room, and might help guide people to the future in the way that that is going to be needed. Because there's no doubting climate change, although some have tried. We do have very heavy rainfall at the moment, and we are having long spells of drought. That in turn will mean that we'll have to deliver those goods in a completely different way. That very heavy rainfall is washing away and eroding the soil. It's also washing away all the pollutants, and you mentioned that in here, and I'm really pleased to see that. But if we look at those long spells of drought that we're currently experiencing, and very warm periods, should we not be looking at the opportunity to grow something differently that might not have grown here before, and maybe investing in some of those schemes?

I think we need to be, and you are, forward-thinking here. We can look at the possibilities of what can work, might work, and also we're going to have to learn what won't work. But that's always been the case in farming, and I want to promote here—because I'm going to—Caerhys organic farm in Pembrokeshire, because it led the way very early on when others weren't, and it diversified instead of—. The only way it could have survived was increasing the number of cows that it had on the land. It decided not to, and went organic instead. So, I think there are some really good examples of where things have worked, but the biggest threat to all of this, and I will repeat it, is Westminster. We've heard some very worrying statements about money grabbing today. And that's previous EU money that came here and belonged to Wales. I'm sure you've had conversations, and I'm sure you'll have them again, but we cannot have a situation where we have all the money centralised in Westminster, and Westminster dictate to us in Wales what we can do because they've hung on to the purse strings. Thank you.