5. What plans does the Welsh Government have to increase the supply of locally sourced foods? OQ58450

Thank you. The Welsh Government provides substantial investment and support for the food industry. Our food trade programme is securing new Welsh product orders in retailers, and new public procurement guidance will prioritise wider socioeconomic benefits. Our free school meals policy will also open opportunities for local suppliers and producers. 

I thank you for that answer. Of course, there are two sides to producing food—it's supply and demand. I think we're coming fast-forward to Christmas, and people will be buying locally sourced food, and I think that there's a real opportunity here, perhaps more than ever, to focus people's minds on buying local—those people, of course, who have any money left to buy anything whatsoever after this budget. I would like to ask you, Minister, whether you can work with local suppliers to be able to sell their goods to the local market. We've seen a lot of this during lockdown, and there was really good practice that was adopted by local suppliers in terms of food hampers and suchlike. I think we have the potential to be in another market crisis, so I just would like to ask whether you're thinking along those lines, to carry on the very good practice and promote it, from two years ago, and to apply that now.

Thank you. I think you make a very important point. Certainly during the first lockdown and then the subsequent lockdown, but then during the pandemic, really, I think many people for the first time bought from their local butchers, their local market, and, as you say, a lot of our food and drink producers found new ways of selling their produce locally.

It’s the season of food festivals—after the summer agricultural shows, I think we go into food festival time. I was in my own constituency on Saturday at the Wrexham Feast, and it was great to see so many local producers there. Llangollen Food Festival is coming up, along with Brecon, and I'm sure everybody's now going to shout out their local food festivals. That is a really good opportunity, and I'm really pleased as a Government we are able to support these local food festivals, because that's, perhaps, where somebody will go along for the first time and meet local producers that perhaps they haven't seen before, and then continue to do that. So, I think there is a massive opportunity, and I'm really happy to be able to support as many food festivals as possible.

The COVID-19 pandemic, the Ukrainian war and, of course, our climate crisis have made it absolutely clear that we have to reduce our reliance on imported food. The £8.5 billion Welsh food and farming sector, of course, can help us to do that, and we need to give thanks to our Welsh farmers, who play a massive part in producing climate-friendly and good-quality local produce. Now, we welcome the Agriculture (Wales) Bill, but it does have a significant and fundamental flaw. Whilst you quite rightly stated that the production of food should be the first objective, that is actually out of sync with potentially forcing our farmers now to have 10 per cent tree cover on their land through the sustainable farming scheme, and by, of course, that awful measure of expanding the nitrate vulnerable zones from 2.4 per cent to 100 per cent of Welsh farmland. Now, rather than championing my farmers in Aberconwy in producing local climate-friendly food, what they are witnessing is a Welsh Government—and they tell me this—that is coming at their businesses with a guillotine, cutting their production ability and their chances of survival. So, will you ensure that the production of food is not just a legislative objective and that it does become a reality, and will you also review some of the regulatory burdens you have imposed prior to the emergencies that I have just described now, so that our farmers stand at least a good chance of producing and providing us with that local food we all so badly need? 

So, I don't think there is a flaw. I think it's a complementary agenda. So, it is really important that our farmers produce food sustainably, and they do that, and they will be rewarded for that; it's absolutely right. The 10 per cent tree cover that we're asking for on every farm is to share the load across Wales. If farmers don't want to plant trees, they don't have to plant trees, but, for me, they are obviously the people we would go to to ask in the first place, but, if they don't want to do it, they don't have to do it; they don't have to be part of the scheme. 

There are no such things as NVZs anymore. We brought in the agri-pollution water quality regulations; NVZs have gone. We have our net zero ambitions. We have our climate targets to meet, and I'm afraid—. We are seeing the impact of climate change now. And we know that our future generation of farmers are going to be farming in very, very difficult and different circumstances to now. We can see the weather changing; you only have to look at this summer, don't you, and at what they have to contend with. 

I should say one of the things that we could do to support our farmers—and I would call on every Member in this Chamber, and that includes members of your group—is to lobby the UK Government to make sure we don't lose a penny of the agricultural budget, as we were promised.