The progress that humankind has made to date is thanks to the agricultural revolution. Without farming being able to feed the population, we would not have had our industrial revolution, which forms the world we live in today. Being able to support an increasing population with reliable good-quality food is key to a stable and prosperous society, which we all would hope to live in. I would argue that food security is as important now as it has ever been. Good-quality and plentiful food supplies have allowed our society to evolve and gain greater skills. But this is wholly dependent on our farmers to produce the food that we need. Those who produce our food are the backbone of our very existence. Myself and other Senedd Members in my party, such as Sam Kurtz, Peter Fox and our illustrious leader Andrew R.T. Davies, have worked and still work in the farming industry, and know full well the complexities of the situations that we face.

The first thing that many of us do when we wake up is think of what we are going to have for breakfast, lunch or dinner—or if you're me, you tend to think about that as soon as the last meal's gone. But even in times of crisis and chaos, it is our basic human need to take on food and water to enable us to survive, and everybody should have access to that. Food is now seen as a commodity, trading across the world; the globalisation of food now means that we have become vulnerable to shocks in countries right across the world. We are living in uncertain times, where our usual reliance on previously stable markets will be tested. As has been said, the situation in Ukraine and Russia poses a significant concern for us all, threatening the world supplies of flour, grain and fertiliser and chemicals for the UK market, which we need.

Food shortages and increasing prices can threaten world order. The increasing bread price in Africa and the middle east could prove to destabilise many governments and democracies. We saw for ourselves here, in our country, during COVID that empty shelves in our supermarkets caused widespread panic, and I cannot stress enough the importance of keeping our nation fed. We must ensure that, here in Wales, we are resilient to political, physical and financial shocks from around the world. Only two days ago, The New York Times ran an article titled 'Ukraine War Threatens to Cause a Global Food Crisis'. The piece outlined the worrying fact that a crucial proportion of the world's wheat, corn and barley is trapped in Russia and Ukraine because of the war, while even larger proportions of the world's fertiliser are stuck in Russia and Belarus with no sign of them getting anywhere.

There have been concerns raised about the imports of food or feedstuffs, not just from a food security point of view, but from the environmental damage this is causing in those countries and the transportation footprints. For many years, I've championed farm-to-fork for local produce and the education of our young people and the nation to know more about where their food comes from. And we must be proud of our agricultural sector here in Wales: they produce top-quality produce in a sustainable manner and do an amazing job day in, day out. We should be supporting this sector and recognise how essential they are in order for food security, and I do hope that the Minister, in the White Paper, will make food security a key part of that.

I applaud my colleague Peter Fox's food Bill to address the food waste issue. I believe we should be moving away from convenience-based food, and instead be championing home-cooked, local produce that's seasonal, and all the associated health benefits this would bring. I believe that, since COVID, the Welsh population have a greater understanding of the supply chain issues of where their food comes from, and there has been a move back, as my colleague Sam Kurtz has said, to buying local and supporting our local businesses. But I believe we need to make it clearer on the packaging of food, to identify local products and where our food comes from. We need better labelling on foodstuffs so that we can make a choice to eat Welsh or British produce. At the moment, many foodstuffs are marketed as British when they're only packaged in this country, and I think that is a disgrace.

We face many challenges in the coming years and decades ahead, from wars to climate change, all of which strengthen our argument for greater food security within our borders. And I implore Members right across the Chamber to support the Welsh Conservative motion today.