Part of 3. Questions to the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs – in the Senedd at 12:45 pm on 24 June 2020.
Thank you, Jenny. We're all getting used to new ways of working, aren't we? Just about your comments about horticulture, as you say, it does make up only 1 per cent of the Welsh agricultural sector, so there's massive potential there to increase. And you'll know, from answers I gave you during committee scrutiny, that this is an area we are looking at and how we do enable, if farmers want to, to go into the horticultural part of the sector.
In relation to your questions around the dairy sector, I think, at the moment, it's around £0.5 million, but I will have to check that out. And we're certainly looking at the applications now. I think we've had about 91 applications in, and I know about 11 have been processed already and the money will be reaching farmers, I hope, by the end of this week. The private storage aid schemes for skimmed milk powder, butter and cheese were announced by the European Commission and opened on 7 May. I know the cheese quota particularly was very well received, and that allocation has now been filled, but applications do continue to be received for butter. The non-collection of milk amounted to a very small number of cases, and non-collection has been included as part of the dairy support scheme, as this obviously was outside the control of the dairy farmer. But I absolutely recognise how upsetting that was. Even for a small number of farmers, it was incredibly upsetting and it's something we would want to avoid.