Fairness for our Farmers

Plaid Cymru’s priority is to protect the future of our family farms. They are the backbone of our rural economy, they shape our environment and sustain our communities and culture.

Years of Tory economic chaos has contributed to huge rises in farm input costs and Westminster’s post-Brexit trade deals have allowed more cheap imports to undermine our domestic markets. The Tories have also broken their promise of “not a penny less” in farm funding to Wales, leaving Wales hundreds of millions of pounds worse off.

We will give Wales a veto over future trade deals that undermine Welsh agricultural communities.

We have opposed Labour’s Sustainable Farming Scheme proposal for 10% tree cover on all farms demanding a more flexible approach. We have also called for a reduction in the universal actions required to enter the scheme, as well as move away from the ‘costs incurred/income foregone’ funding model which doesn’t provide sufficient incentive for farmers to join the scheme, to one which recognises the social value the agricultural sector makes to the Welsh language, culture and the local economy. Working with the farming unions and others we succeeded in ensuring that the plan will now be delayed for a year and reviewed to ensure it works for farming and for nature.

Plaid Cymru’s motion to scrap the NVZ (nitrate vulnerable zone) regulations was narrowly defeated in the Senedd. We have nevertheless secured a delay in their full implementation until at least next year. We have also secured £20m funding to help farmers with infrastructure costs and persuaded the Government to undertake a full review of the regulations. We support a more proportionate and sophisticated approach to water quality regulations utilising updated technical innovations rather than a farming-by-calendar approach.

Plaid Cymru will introduce a broader approach to tackling bovine TB which includes controlling the disease in wildlife.

In the face of increased threats from new and emerging animal and plant diseases, we will also support steps to strengthen the UK’s disease surveillance networks, including protecting the UK’s scanning surveillance budget.

More must be done to tackle dog attacks on livestock. We will support the re-introduction of livestock worrying legislation that the Conservative UK Government failed to complete in the last Parliament.

We will look to introduce policies to improve transparency within the supply chain and strengthen the powers of the Groceries Adjudicator to more effectively tackle unfair supply chain practices. We will ensure that food labelling accurately reflects country of origin, allowing consumers to choose food that is ‘Welsh’ and not just ‘British’ so that they can make an informed choice.

There is an extractive element to food production in Wales. Too often our primary produce is exported to be processed elsewhere, meaning we lose the added value that should be retained in our local economies. Plaid Cymru will continue to promote opportunities to develop local processing capacity and use procurement policy to shorten supply chains, cut food miles and create local jobs.

We will demand amendments to the Shortage Occupancy List to ensure primary producers in Wales have access to the workforce required to support the industry.