Wales’s farmers produce food of exceptional quality. Farming is also the backbone of our rural economy, and the beating heart of our rural communities – supporting Welsh language and culture, and stewarding Wales’s natural environment. For these reasons and more, Plaid Cymru is proud to support our farmers.
A Plaid Cymru government will protect the future of the Welsh family farm in a changing climate.
We will maintain strong collaboration with the farming community as we implement the Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS), and continue to evolve and refine it – supporting thriving and sustainable farm businesses to produce food, while also progressively delivering key environmental outcomes.
We will:
- Establish a multi-year funding cycle for the SFS, giving farmers long-term stability and certainty, taking the first one-year budget as the baseline.
- Commission an independent review of the bureaucratic burden on family farms in Wales, with a view to streamlining on-farm requirements and reducing duplication and unnecessary paperwork.
- Implement a new science-led, outcomes-based and risk-proportionate approach to managing nitrate vulnerability across catchments – moving beyond the outdated ‘farming by calendar’ approach and supporting farmers to adopt new technologies and practices to reduce agricultural water pollution.
- Maintain robust biosecurity standards, and draw on the advice of the TB Technical Advisory Group in implementing a new approach to managing bTB – one which recognises wildlife as a source of infection and enables scientifically validated control methods.
- Protect high-quality agricultural land from being lost to large-scale corporate carbon-offsetting plantations or excessive solar developments, while making it easier for farmers and rural communities to invest in their own renewable energy projects.
Plaid Cymru will promote succession and new entrants into food and farming – working through the Development Bank of Wales to support young farmers into the industry. We will maintain pressure on the UK Government to ensure that any changes to inheritance tax do not undermine the future of family farms in Wales.
Insisting that the Welsh Government has a seat at the table whenever and wherever decisions are made about and for Wales, we will seek to ensure that Welsh farming is protected in any future trade deals, and to continue to improve access to European and other markets for Welsh producers.