6. How will the sustainable farming scheme support habitat conservation projects? OQ57564

To support ecosystem resilience, our farmers will be paid to manage and create on-farm habitat. We will also support farmers to collaborate to deliver against local and national priorities at a landscape scale.

Thank you, Minister, for the statement. Llywydd, I would like to just remind Members of the fact that I am a practising farmer, as stated in my interests. As I'm sure you're aware, Minister, this Friday marks the beginning of the Big Farmland Bird Count, organised by the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust. This aims to encourage farmers and land managers to support farmland birds and to highlight the hard work already done by many of them to help reverse biodiversity loss. I'm sure, Minister, you would agree that the work going on is commendable. We know that promoting sustainability and biodiversity is something that the Welsh Government's proposed sustainable land management scheme aims to do. However, Minister, there are still grave concerns amongst farmers that future farming support pivots too much toward paying for public goods, with a lack of recognition about the importance of supporting those producers in Wales who are trying to produce high-quality affordable food for our communities. Minister, how will the proposed new scheme strike a balance between improving environmental outcomes within the agricultural sector and encouraging and supporting high-quality, sustainable food production to increase the resilience of rural economies and our food systems across Wales?

I've always made it very clear that producing food is absolutely a priority for our farmers, of course it is. You say there are grave concerns. We've been out to consultation three times now. The scheme is still not designed; we want to co-design that scheme. You will have heard me say many times that if it's not the right scheme for our farmers it won't work, so it's really important that they're part of that co-design. We're just asking farmers, and you may be one, to work with us in the summer when we go to the second part of the co-design of the scheme. What's really important, as we've said all along, is public money for public goods. When you say there are grave concerns, I don't hear those grave concerns in the way I did four or five years ago. I do think it's really important that we work together to make sure we get it right. Of course we will continue to support our farmers to produce food that has a low carbon footprint, but they will also be rewarded for the things that they don't get paid for at the moment—so, the clean air, the clean water, the work they do about mitigating flood, the work they do around mitigating drought, the work they do around animal health and welfare. I think it's really important that there is that balance. There has to be that balance, or it just won't work.