The man carrying out a review of farm business resilience in Wales following the severe snow and freezing temperatures that hit the mid and north Wales during March and April has visited a Montgomeryshire farm to hear first hand from farmers about their experiences.

Natural resources and food minister Alun Davies has commissioned Kevin Roberts, former director general of the NFU in England and Wales and former chief executive of the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board, to carry out the review of the aftermath of the serious weather conditions during the peak lambing period for most sheep flocks.

Farmers' Union of Wales Montgomeryshire county chairman Alwyn Vaughan welcomed Mr Roberts, union members and other farmers from north Ceredigion, Meirionnydd and Denbighshire to Nantycoedwr, Llanwddyn, the home of Mr and Mrs Thomas Jones who farm on the Lake Vyrnwy Estate.

FUW county executive officer Susan Jones said: "Many of those present told Mr Roberts of their experiences and the difficulties encountered due to the heavy snowfall. A large number of roofs had collapsed under the weight of snow on buildings in the area - in some cases stock had been killed and trapped in buildings as a result.

"Farms were cut off with many rural roads blocked by snow. He heard how farmers in the Llangynog area had hauled feed for ewes trapped on the mountains on makeshift sledges to keep them alive and how tourists and sightseers ignored road closure signs when they got stuck and had to be towed out of the area.

"Many farmers had experienced difficulties in obtaining sheep compound feeds. All suppliers in the area had run out and were forced to restrict orders to keep everyone going. Due to the large number of cade lambs, lamb milk had also been in short supply."

Mrs Jones said Mr Roberts was told the seven-day burial derogation to allow farmers to bury dead stock on their land had been of little use. "Despite its extension for a further period of seven days many dead sheep did not come to light until the snow melted two to three weeks later.

"The derogation was conditional on farmers notifying authorities and one farmer reported spending three hours on the phone in an attempt to comply. Fallen stock disposal costs were adding to the financial burden on farms.

"England, Scotland and Northern Ireland governments had recognised the difficulties being experienced by their farmers in their areas affected by the severe weather problems and reduced fallen stock disposal costs and allowed unconditional burial.

"Mr Roberts thanked the farmers for their comments. He recognised that the poor weather conditions in 2012 was the beginning of a series of issues experienced by the farming community and that the heavy snowfall at the time of the main lambing period was a major blow to the sector.

"He appreciated that the affect of the weather would continue throughout the year."

Mr Vaughan expressed his appreciation to Mr Roberts for visiting the area and thanked Mr and Mrs Jones for hosting the event on behalf of the FUW.

[caption id="attachment_2484" align="aligncenter" width="300"] FARM MEETING: From left, Susan Jones, Alwyn Vaughan and Kevin Roberts[/caption]

The recently-retired chief executive of the Royal Welsh Agricultural Society (RWAS) and a champion of uplands farming were honoured by the Farmers' Union of Wales during the union's annual general meeting in Aberystwyth today (Monday June 17).

David Walters, who joined the RWAS as assistant secretary in January 1976 after graduating from University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, with a BSc Honours degree in agriculture, was presented with the FUW's annual External Award for services to the agricultural industry in Wales.

And Derek Morgan, chairman of the union's hill farming and marginal land committee, received the annual Internal Award in recognition of services to the FUW and the agricultural industry in Wales.

Paying tribute to the contribution of both winners to Welsh farming for so many years, FUW president Emyr Jones said: "It is highly significant that the nominations for these awards were made by the union's members throughout Wales and then our county branches vote on each nomination.

"This ensures those who receive the awards are very worthy recipients and can be assured they have the strong support of a huge number of Welsh farmers."

Carmarthenshire-born Mr Walters was promoted to RWAS secretary in 1978 and appointed chief executive in 1984 since when he has also been honorary secretary of the Council for Awards of Royal Agricultural Societies in Wales.

He was awarded an Associateship of the Royal Agricultural Societies in July 1991 and its Fellowship in April 1996. In July 2003 he was awarded a Fellowship of the University of Wales Aberystwyth and received the OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours of June 2005.

He is a former member of the Institute of Rural Sciences Advisory Committee, University of Wales Aberystwyth Court and Council, the Museum of Welsh Life Advisory Committee and of the former Independent Broadcasting Authority.

He is a past president of Llangadog YFC, a co-opted member of the Wales YFC board of management since 2001 and was chairman of Llangadog Races for 10 years until 1996.

Sixty-three-year-old Mr Morgan, of Safn y Coed, Llangurig, Powys, is a farmer with over 40 years’ experience in the industry. He runs an upland family farm in the Upper Wye Valley rearing Welsh sheep.

He is a former member of the Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy (TSE) and Fallen Stock Committee and Animal ID Stakeholders Groups.

He is chairman of the Welsh Upland Forum, set up in 2004 to advise the Minister for Rural Affairs in the Welsh Assembly on upland farming issues, and sits on the Stakeholders Group reviewing the Axis 2 Scheme of the new Rural Development Plan.

During the 2001 Foot and Mouth outbreak he represented the FUW on the Defra Stakeholders’ Group in London and continues to sit on the group.

In 1997 he was a founder member and remains chairman of the Welsh Sheep Dog Society set up to save the indigenous Welsh sheep dog which was in danger of becoming extinct. To date, over 1,000 puppies have successfully been registered.

During 1993 Mr Morgan was asked to set up a Ram Performance Group by the Welsh Sheep Strategy and it has continued to be a success in view of its involvement with the Sire Reference Schemes.

He joined the FUW in 1985 and became vice chairman of the Brecon and Radnor branch for three years before becoming chairman. He became vice chairman and then chairman of the central hill farming and marginal land committee, a post he has held for 11 years.

In 2009 he was appointed a member of the Welsh Food Advisory Committee which provides advice and information to the Food Standards Agency.

In 1988  Safn y Coed became one of the first Technology Interactive Resource farms in Wales which are now called Demonstration Farms by the Welsh Assembly Farming Connect programme.

He was awarded a scholarship in 1999 to visit New Zealand for a month to see how their Monitor Farm System works and during this time he travelled extensively in the North and South Islands viewing a total of 18 farms.

Mr Morgan now organises Safn-y-Coed discussion groups which meet regularly to talk about issues relevant to the industry.

In 2002 he was asked by Hybu Cig Cymru (HCC) to become one of the trial farms for electronic ID tagging for sheep to evaluate the software, hardware and tags needed for electronic identification.

[caption id="attachment_2480" align="aligncenter" width="250"] Hill farmers' champion Derek Morgan[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_2481" align="aligncenter" width="235"] David Walters (left) receives the FUW external award from Emyr Jones[/caption]

The past 12 months have been the hardest many Welsh farmers have seen for many years, Farmers' Union of Wales president Emyr Jones told the union's annual general meeting in Aberystwyth today (June 17).

Mr Jones said the poor weather conditions had led to a fall in the quality and quantity of crops, low milk yields, huge losses of livestock and poor lambing and calving percentages – all on top of significant drops in farmgate returns.

"These were the problems facing the industry before the horrendous snow which hit in mid-March and persisted for many weeks, adding to the losses and costs across Wales and, for some of those worst affected in Mid and North Wales, leading to financial and emotional impacts comparable to those we experienced in 2001 when out industry was hit by Foot and Mouth disease.

"The FUW has made its views clear on the Welsh Government’s response to this crisis and many of you know that our Minister and I have had some heated exchanges regarding this matter.

"The Welsh Government and the FUW both know where each other stand, and I see no point in repeating what has already been said.

"We have therefore welcomed the Government’s decision to commission reviews by Kevin Roberts and Hybu Cig Cymru into various long and short term impacts of the weather over the past year, and what might be done by Government and industry to ensure that such impacts are minimised in future.

"Having engaged in both those reviews, the Union looks forward to seeing the final reports, and to working to ensure a prosperous industry: whatever our differences, both the FUW and Welsh Government share that vision for a prosperous industry.

"The single most important set of tools we have available to us to secure such prosperity, boost resilience and allow appropriate reactions by government to extreme events come under the Common Agricultural Policy and no doubt Kevin Roberts will reveal in his report how he believes such tools might be used in future.

"The FUW believes that such tools are best used in the same way they are used to help and strengthen our main competitors in other regions of the EU – after all, that should be the whole point of having a common policy within a single European market, and any changes which do not take into account what our counterparts are doing to help their supply chains and export markets have the potential to cause severe damage our own economy. 

"These are areas where the Welsh Government and the FUW have some differences of opinion and the Union has particular concerns that too little regard is paid to the policies of the Scots and Irish – our most significant competitors in many respects.

"But we are certainly of one mind when it comes to our belief that the CAP and EU membership are both critical to the economic viability of Wales.

"When it comes to the debate over EU membership, farmers should be in no doubt that our exit from the EU will not result in less red tape, since we will still be required to comply with EU standards if we are to import into the EU.

"And who is to say what our import quota for lamb or beef, or import tariffs, could look like if we were outside the EU?

"We know all too well what exclusion from the EU market can do to our prices: look at what happened to our beef industry from 1996 and the impact of FMD in 2001 – both bitter experiences of what being excluded from the EU market can do to our prices and farm incomes.

"Given that successive UK governments have made it clear that they do not want to provide support for agriculture, and are quite happy to liberalise food importation, it is difficult to imagine how we would survive outside the EU.

"Perhaps our exit from the EU is unlikely – I certainly hope so – but a threat of a similar nature has come from the creeping renationalisation of new CAP policies which has occurred over the past year as part of the horse trading between member states during the CAP negotiations.

"So far that horse trading has seen the UK giving up more of its Pillar 2 budget than any other member state, when we were entitled to a significant increase, and UK agreement with an increase in levels of coupled payments for other member states but only on the condition that our own threshold be reduced to almost half of what would be available in other countries.

"These are just two examples out of a number which would see Wales placed at a disadvantage to its competitors, and while we all wish to see a degree of flexibility which is appropriate to Wales, we cannot underestimate the dangers of moving away from overarching common policies.

"Put simply, the FUW believes that adopting a kind of island mentality and focusing in on aspirations for Welsh farming without taking into account the bigger picture, by weighing up what our competitors are doing and are likely to do in future, represents a huge danger for the economics of our entire food chain."

The total amount raised by the Farmers' Union of Wales’s charity fund for Cancer Research Wales (CRW) has broken through the £50,000 mark following a contribution of nearly £3,000 by the union's Caernarfonshire branch.

A £2,932 cheque - part of the final sum raised by the union's Caernarfonshire branch at a series of farmhouse breakfast events earlier this year - has just been presented to FUW national president Emyr Jones by county chairman Dafydd Gwyndaf.

Mr Jones said: "Last month I was delighted to hand over a £50,000 cheque to CRW patron and BBC TV news presenter Huw Edwards on the set of his BBC Wales Sunday night programme 'The Wales Report' so I was very pleased to accept this further handsome donation from Caernarfonshire.

"To have raised so much towards this very worthy cause is certainly beyond my wildest expectations. The money will help CRW continue its ground-breaking research into cancer treatments at facilities such as the Velindre Centre in Cardiff where its research laboratory was opened by Mr Edwards in 2000 and has since become a centre of excellence for the non-surgical treatment of cancer."

[caption id="attachment_2475" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Dafydd Gwyndaf (second from left) presents the £2,932 cheque to Emyr Jones surrounded by other county officials (from left) executive officer Gwynedd Watkin, past president Morgan Jones-Parry and vice chairman Tudur Parry.[/caption]