Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Rural Affairs and North Wales, and Trefnydd – in the Senedd at 2:45 pm on 23 June 2021.

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Photo of Lesley Griffiths Lesley Griffiths Labour 2:45, 23 June 2021

Thank you very much. You raised several important points, with, I think, the first one around a young farmer being unable to either rent or purchase farmland or a farm. And I've done a significant amount of work with young farmers, along with Llyr Huws Gruffydd, when he was in your role, to ensure that they have the opportunity to start their own farm, or, if they can't buy one, then at least rent one. So, I think you raise a really important point. And protecting our farms is something that, obviously, I believe is vital to my role. And going forward, as we develop our agricultural policy, again, you may be aware that the words 'active farmer' appear a lot, if you look at the White Paper that I published back in December, and ensuring that it's active farmers who are rewarded for the work is very high in the priorities there.

Tree planting is clearly very important. If we are going to achieve our carbon emissions ambitions, if we are going to achieve our climate change ambitions, we need to be planting more trees. I've always said—and tree planting now sits within the climate change ministry—when I had responsibility for it, we weren't planting enough trees. So, it is important that we do plant trees, but, obviously, who gets the funding for that is also important.