The Sustainable Farming Scheme

Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Rural Affairs and North Wales, and Trefnydd – in the Senedd at 2:57 pm on 2 February 2022.

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Photo of Lesley Griffiths Lesley Griffiths Labour 2:57, 2 February 2022

Thank you. Certainly that will be part of our sustainable farming scheme, which, as I mentioned in my earlier answer to Peter Fox, we are currently co-designing with our farmers and other interested bodies. You'll be aware that my colleague the Deputy Minister for Climate Change did a deep dive into the barriers of planting trees and what we could do to ensure that—. If we are going to react to the climate emergency in the way that we want to and to become a net-zero Wales by 2050, we've got to plant 86 million trees over the next decade. We haven't been planting enough trees—I don't think anybody would say that we had.

It's really important that we help our farmers get involved in these plans. The Deputy Minister has set up a woodland finance working group, which obviously my officials sit on with his, because I hold most of the funding in relation to trees, but, of course, the policy sits within the climate change ministry. It's really important that we work across Government, so it's good to hear of cross-party statements of opinion. We want to work with anybody, our stakeholders, to ensure that we do plant significantly more trees. But what is really important, and you said it at the beginning of your question, is that we plant the right tree in the right place.