[caption id="attachment_6009" align="alignleft" width="200"] FUW president Glyn Roberts[/caption]

European farm ministers met on Monday (11 April) to adopt a regulation that will promote the consumption of milk products, fruit and vegetables in schools.

Disappointingly, the UK abstained from the vote and, as a consequence, will not be supporting the new regulation.

The scheme, which has an annual budget of €250m (£201m), will see supporting countries select agricultural products to supply to schools in an attempt to promote the qualities of both local food and healthy eating habits.

“This is hugely disappointing and represents a missed opportunity for the agricultural sector. Why did the UK abstain from the vote? A scheme like this is absolutely worth supporting, especially when we take the rise in child obesity into account,” said FUW President Glyn Roberts.

The current school fruit and vegetables scheme and the school milk scheme, which are separate at the moment, will merge into one from August 2017 under the new plans.

“If we consider the declining consumption of milk products amongst children why wouldn’t we support such a scheme?

“It is in all of our interests to educate our young people and small children about where their food comes from and what constitutes as a healthy diet,” added Mr Roberts.

Farm visits for children is another feature of the new scheme, along with a concerted emphasis on other educational activities.

“At a time when some children think their milk comes from a bottle in the supermarket and their meat from McDonalds, surely we owe it to the next generation to facilitate educational visits?,” said Mr Roberts.

“Welsh and UK produce should be available in our schools, hospitals, local authorities, leisure centres and nursing homes throughout the year.

“Other European countries are extremely good at promoting the relationship between agriculture and food.   For example, Italy is currently leading the way in Europe in improving school cafeteria standards under the “Gaining Health” program.

“Their Ministry of Health even set their own guidelines to promote a zero-mile approach, which means that schools have to source food locally. A model like this must be adopted here in the UK urgently,” added the Union President.

He added that the lack of support for this scheme confirms a key fear with regard to the lack of support for agriculture from UK government.

“As we approach the EU referendum, it has just become clearer how much support we could expect from our home government in regards to agriculture.

“If government can’t be in support of a scheme which promotes local produce then , how can we expect them to fully support our   rural economies and protect domestic food security if we leave the EU?”

The announcement made by the Electoral Commission that ‘Britain Stronger in Europe’ is the official Remain campaign ahead of June’s EU referendum has been applauded by the Farmers’ Union of Wales (FUW).

The FUW threw its weight behind the “Britain Stronger in Europe” campaign 2 months ago as the first farming union in the UK and will continue to work with the campaign Board in Wales to ensure that Britain remains a member of the European Union.

“The Union sees this as the optimal way to protect our rural economies, especially when it comes to support from the Common Agricultural Policy, which flows to farms and then inevitably to many local businesses,” said Union Managing Director Alan Davies.

The FUW echoed the campaign's executive director Will Straw’s sentiment, who was delighted that the Electoral Commission have recognised that Britain Stronger in Europe has the breadth of support, the unity of purpose and the campaigning organisation to be the official Remain campaign in the upcoming referendum.

“We are pleased to be an official partner of this campaign and will increase our efforts to make the argument to remain in the EU over the coming weeks.

“We are holding a number of EU debates over the coming weeks, details of which will be provided soon,” added Mr Davies.

The Farmers’ Union of Wales has welcomed the Parliamentary submission by the National Police Chiefs Council to remove the ability of the RSPCA to prosecute animal welfare breaches and instead establish a statutory body funded by government to undertake this work.

“The FUW believes that the move would foster greater accountability and would remove the unacceptable and dangerous conflict of interest between many of the RSPCA’s political campaigns and its non-statutory role in animal welfare prosecutions,” said the Union’s Senior Policy Officer Dr Hazel Wright.

Indeed, the various conflicting roles of the RSPCA - as a lobby organisation, fundraiser and prosecutor - have been raised by the FUW in the past.  

The FUW has previously called for decisive action to be taken by the Charity Commission in relation to the RSPCA’s lobbying actions, which can only be described as “aggressive and threatening”.

In 2012, the RSPCA’s chief executive Gavin Grant described the charity as ‘the oldest law enforcement agency still in existence in this country’ and threatened to campaign to ‘stop consumers drinking milk’ if supermarkets were unable to differentiate between ‘badger friendly milk’ and milk from English badger cull areas.

“Over the past decade, the FUW has submitted numerous complaints to the Attorney General, Charity Commission and ASA regarding the RSPCA’s use of extreme and misleading rhetoric, warning that failure to take action would merely increase the organisation’s tendency towards militant action.

“The FUW would welcome involvement in the way in which animal welfare cases should be prosecuted in the future and has a dedicated Animal Health and Welfare Committee designed to shape policy on such issues,” added Dr Wright.

Procurement and renewable energy were at the top of the agenda when farmers from Glamorgan came together recently to question election candidates ahead of the Welsh Assembly elections.

Attending the meeting were Huw Irranca-Davies (Labour), Glenda Jones (UKIP candidate for Ogmore by-election), Andrew RT Davies (Conservatives), Denis Campbell (Liberal Democrats) and Tim Thomas (Plaid Cymru).

The event was held at St Mary’s Hotel, Bridgend and was chaired by FUW Glamorgan County Chairman Richard Walker.

There was a strong call for the next Welsh Government to ensure that more Welsh produce is sourced for hospitals and schools.

FUW Glamorgan County Executive Officer Rachel Saunders said: “Our food produce is grown and reared to the highest welfare standards across Europe. It should be a priority that home grown food is served at our dinner tables before imported food products fill our supermarket shelves.

“Welsh and UK produce should be available in our schools, hospitals, local authorities, leisure centres and nursing homes throughout the year. And it should be the first choice for supermarkets, restaurants and everyone else who has a role to play in the food chain.

“What we need, now more than ever, is a full commitment to local procurement. Our farmers have suffered enough from low farmgate prices over the years and they deserve to be fully supported by our home governments.”

The call for local procurement is underpinned by the FUW election manifesto and reminds all government departments and public bodies that they have a duty to support government priorities in terms of boosting Wales’ farming and food industry and sourcing local produce is definitely one of them.

Renewable energy as an option of diversification for farmers was also hotly debated on the night.

Following the meeting Richard Walker, Glamorgan County Chairman for the FUW, said : “For hundreds of years Wales’ mining, arable and woollen industries relied on renewable energy in the form of water and wind power, and by the end of the industrial revolution in the mid-19th Century no hamlet, however small, was complete without some form of mill.

“The revolution in renewable energy, brought about by recognition of the need to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, has resulted in the development of new commercially viable sources of renewable energy, such as solar panels, as well as improvements in the efficiency of wind and water power.”

Despite Wales’ being perfectly suited for some forms of renewable energy generation, the percentage of electricity generated in Wales from renewable stands at just 10 percent – 5 percent lower than the UK average, and the lowest of all the UK devolved regions.

Whilst the Union remains neutral in terms of the divisive issue of large-scale wind farms, as laid out in the FUW election manifesto, we fully support the development of appropriate on-farm renewable energy sources, and believe Wales has only scratched the surface in terms of the contribution Welsh farms can make to green energy production.

“The decision in 2015 by the UK Government’s Department for Energy and Climate Change, which has responsibility for major national energy projects, to suddenly and drastically reduce support for renewables not only compromises our ability to help mitigate climate change, but has also led directly to farmers and others losing significant sums already invested in unfinished projects,” added Mr Walker.

In light of this the Union further called on the next Welsh Government to seek alternative and innovative ways in which funding can be provided in order to develop on-farm energy production and identify those barriers to on-farm energy production which fall within the remit of Welsh Government.

The Union further calls on the next Welsh Government to reduce bureaucratic burdens which prevent or add to the financial and time burdens which prevent developments for on-farm energy production.

Other questions put to the candidates focused on how RDP money is spent in Wales, what business rate relief schemes each party would propose to introduce and members stressed the fact that more support was needed for young farmers in Wales.