Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs – in the Senedd at 2:05 pm on 17 July 2019.
I'd be very happy to visit a farm in your constituency. I think it's really important that I'm out there, visiting farms and listening to farmers' concerns. You'll be aware of the extensive consultation we had last year in relation to 'Brexit and our land', and obviously 'Sustainable Farming and our Land' is part 2 of that consultation. Both unions, I think, welcomed the consultation. I think they could see that there had been a move from what was proposed in 'Brexit and our land' to 'Sustainable Farming and our Land'. One of the things is about having one sustainable farming scheme rather than the two schemes that we propose, so I hope it showed that it's a very meaningful consultation last year, that we listened to farmers' concerns, and I can assure them and everybody else that this consultation will be just as meaningful. It's open till 30 October and I would urge people to put forward their consultations, and certainly, as I said in my answer to Llyr Huws Gruffydd, over the next few weeks when we're attending summer shows, I'm sure that will be a topic for conversation. To be able to reward farmers for sustainable food production I think is very important. Again, it was something that came out of the 'Brexit and our land' consultation. What is very clear to me, and I'm sure to many people here, is that the basic payment scheme and the common agricultural policy have not given us the environmental outcomes that we would want, and that is what we're looking to do with sustainable farming.