The Farmers’ Union of Wales had a follow-up meeting with the Minister for Rural Affairs, North Wales representative and Trefnydd, Lesley Griffiths on 4th March to discuss further details of the joint statement published last week.
The statement by the First Minister, Mark Drakeford and Lesley Griffiths published on 27th February outlined some next steps regarding the Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS), in addition to repeated comments around the issues of bovine TB and the Control of Agricultural Pollution (CoAP) NVZ regulations.
This was the first of the more regular meetings the Minister has promised the FUW during these challenging times and the FUW used this as an opportunity to question her on the finer details behind the statement from last week.
Both sides of the table agreed that time is very much against us given the Welsh Government’s intentions to launch the SFS next year. How the next few months are used by the incoming First Minister and his government to rethink these proposals in co-design with the industry will be crucial.
The FUW therefore made the point that the regular review between the Welsh Government and farming unions must include meaningful discussions which result in real changes to the current proposals.
It’s clear that as we’ve come to finalise the FUW response to the consultation, there are significant concerns which must be addressed before the SFS is launched. These include:
- practical and bureaucratic barriers within each of the Universal Actions
- how and where we believe these Actions should or should not be incorporated into the scheme framework
- how the payment methodology properly rewards farmers and provide economic stability by going beyond income foregone and costs incurred.
- The processes through which the FUW will have the opportunity to feed into the Bovine TB Technical Advisory Group review of the on-farm slaughter of cattle, and the 4-year review of the CoAP NVZ regulations over the coming months were also discussed with the Minister and her officials.
The FUW welcomed what was a useful meeting with the Minster and her officials. The FUW sincerely believe that recent events have made it clear that there is a need for urgent action from the current and incoming Welsh Government regarding the future direction of agricultural policy in Wales. The FUW truly hope these messages are now being realised and will be actioned over the coming months.