Making sure ‘Sustainable Land Management’ indicators consider the people and businesses behind the terminology
FUW Policy Officer, Teleri Fielden reflect on the Welsh Government’s recent publication of their ‘Sustainable Land Management Indicators and Target Statement’.
December 2025 saw the Welsh Government published their Sustainable Land Management (SLM) Indicators and Targets Statement. This seemingly inconspicuous document sets out the reporting mechanisms, success measures, and potential future targets for all support schemes, regulations and policies within the Agriculture (Wales) Act framework.
It can often take years for our policy lobbying efforts to come to fruition, and what may appear to be innocent phrasing, a simple omission, or simply terminology within a policy document, can suddenly be influential years later. It’s up to us to spot these and act on them to ensure positive, as opposed to negative, outcomes for Welsh farming. Back in 2022 our lobbying work began to influence the Agriculture (Wales) Act 2023, and the final ‘Sustainable Land Management’ (SLM) objectives. Post Brexit, the FUW had to fight hard to ensure food production, agricultural businesses, and rural communities featured explicitly within these ’powers to support purposes’ on the face of the Bill. Whilst the wording wasn’t always what we had hoped for (for example, “improving the resilience of agricultural businesses” as opposed to explicitly ‘protecting and enhancing the economic viability of agricultural businesses’), it ensures that the Welsh Government has the power to financially support farmers for this reason or goal within subsidy rules, outside of the previous safety net of the European Common Agricultural Policy.
After the vision, and the Bill wording was finalised, work turned to creating quantitative ‘indicators’ to assess progress against. After this, comes target setting. During 2025, alongside work to improve and finalise arguably the first and biggest test of the Agriculture (Wales) Act - the Sustainable Farming Scheme - the Union represented the industry on a Technical Expert Group to develop indicators for the SLM objectives. Thanks to the work done three years ago on the ‘powers for support’, we were able to successfully lobby to widen the indicators to include the average (financial) agricultural output by farm, net farm income, agricultural workforce numbers, utilised agricultural area, mental health indicators for farmers and the number of Welsh speakers in the agricultural sector.
Sustainability and a holistic picture of the whole industry must include a balance of economic, environmental, social and cultural factors. Whilst two of the more ‘environmental’ SLM objectives (mitigating and adapting to climate change, and maintaining and enhancing the resilience of ecosystems) play a crucial role in agricultural businesses and Wales’ landscapes, there are a plethora of other bills, acts, objectives, and targets which already measure their progress. What remains a gap, which the Agriculture (Wales) Act and the SLM targets should plug, are explicit targets for both food security, and Welsh farmers’ economic ability to address these wider objectives. Land management decisions to achieve the biodiversity, climate and sustainable food objectives cannot be divorced from the economic and social needs or influences that farming families and food businesses experience. It is also important to recognise that Welsh farmers sit in a far wider economic context of UK-wide and global trade, processing and supply chains.
Put simply, there cannot be a single measure of success to assess the Agriculture (Wales) Act. The FUW will hold the Welsh Government to account on keeping the focus on the people, families and businesses who will be delivering these outcomes; those most impacted by the Act and the schemes, policies and regulations that stem from it over the years to come.
