Locally Sourced Food

Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Rural Affairs and North Wales, and Trefnydd – in the Senedd at 2:58 pm on 28 September 2022.

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Photo of Lesley Griffiths Lesley Griffiths Labour 2:58, 28 September 2022

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.