We need to grow more food in Wales!

Duncan Fisher, Our Food 1200

We are heading into very difficult times – ever-escalating food prices and spreading food poverty at the same time as dropping farm incomes squeezing the life out of our rural regions.

To get through, Wales has to grow more food – a lot more food – for itself and the cities across the border in England.

This means more food grown on farms and more food grown non-commercially in our communities.

Last year, the Future Generations Commissioner and Our Food 1200 hosted a packed event in Cardiff Bay to discuss food security.

Professor Tim Lang, the UK’s leading expert on food policy, presented the case for more attention to how we feed people in the difficult times ahead, not “leaving it to Tesco et al.”

Food prices

The major report Professor Lang was then compiling has just been published by the UK’s National Preparedness Commission, setting out in stark detail the relentlessly growing pressures on our food system, every one of which will inexorably drive up food prices.

The impact of climate overheating is reducing the world’s growing regions and affecting global supplies of fruit and vegetables. We are especially exposed, as we currently import almost 80% of our fruit and around 50% of our vegetables. Add to that the fact that 100% of both our imported and home-grown fruit and veg come from climate-vulnerable regions prone to storms, flooding, drought and fires and it’s easy to see how prices will soar.

Wars, such as that in Ukraine, have forced up prices already, and conflicts are brewing all over the place. A third key driver of unaffordable food is economic inequality, which is burgeoning as the spending power of rich and poor diverge dramatically.

In January this year, one in every seven UK households struggled to afford food, according to the Food Foundation’s food insecurity tracker.

Productivity

Meanwhile, the last thing food price inflation does is give farmers in Wales a higher income. According to Welsh Government figures, Farm business incomes in Wales are reducing, as is productivity, and the number of farms making a loss is increasing, currently 24% of all Welsh farms. The impact of the war in Ukraine on animal feed and fertiliser costs coupled with the ongoing cost of living crisis means this trend is likely to continue.

On top of this, there is the ever-present threat of reducing subsidies and increasing taxes affecting farmers.

We need to grow more food on farms

Welsh farms, particularly those with suitable land, need to grow more food for local and regional markets. We need a new generation of young farmers.

Starting anew in farming is a particular challenge as economic inequality is driving up land prices way beyond what farming could finance.

As a pilot for a bigger community-owned investment project to build new small “affordable farms”, food organisations are working with Powys County Council to build three small farms at Sarn near Newtown. Three young, skilled, but currently landless farming families will move in this Spring.

Planning rules prohibiting housing were a problem but, after two years of work, both Powys County Council and Bannau Brycheiniog National Park Authority approved planning guidance in support of “homes for horticulture”.

All local authorities need to follow suit, and Welsh Government needs to update planning policy nationally to help new farms start.

Fruit and vegetables

The focus must be fruit and vegetables. A lot can be grown in a small space and they provide the foundations of a nutritious everyday diet.

The income per acre for horticulture, using modern agroecological techniques, is 151 times the average per-acre income for Welsh farms. The Welsh Government has already declared a horticulture strategy, which is praised in Tim Lang’s report, and is providing technical and financial support for this kind of farming.

Government needs to expand support for horticulture through the Sustainable Farming Scheme.

The most powerful single way to drive diversification is to provide farmers with reliable and well-priced access to new markets and then provide financial and technical support around that. This model has been proven to work already in Wales.

Reliable access to a market, finance and technical support is what drove the establishment of around 200 intensive poultry units in Powys in a very short time.

The biggest markets are the urban areas where most of us live. Birmingham has a vibrant food strategy to secure more food from its rural hinterlands, and so a joint project with Powys is underway to re-build former food trade routes into the city, a project recently profiled on the BBC Food Programme.

Supply chains

These short supply chains will be owned by farmers, so the profit goes back to the roots, not to fabulously wealthy asset fund managers somewhere else in the world.

Every Welsh city needs to mobilise like Birmingham has, and fast. This would create big opportunities for our farmers.

An additional market that national and local governments can help to build is public sector procurement. Action is already underway here too, through the Welsh Veg In Schools project, mediated by the Welsh wholesaler, Castell Howell Foods. And at community level, regional food partnerships are building ways of distributing locally grown food across their region, through food hubs and food loops.

Welsh farms growing vegetables can supply all these markets at the same time. The infrastructure for all three is the same.

We need to grow more food in urban communities

We need a vast expansion of community food growing, where people can grow their own food, particularly in less wealthy parts of the country.

The UK organisation Social Farms and Gardens, already has 500 community garden programmes in Wales. It knows exactly how to expand community growing. We need new housing developments that combine living and growing food like Oosterwold and Ecodorp Land of Aine in the Netherlands.

What else is needed to make growing more food a reality?

If we grow more food, we need to learn how to store it and prepare it. We need universal cooking classes in schools, working with basic local ingredients. Cegin y Bobl has started this in Carmarthenshire, mobilising chefs at times of the week when they are not cooking in their restaurants.

We must keep down the cost of the food we grow as much as possible – but not so that farmers are crushed, as in the current food system.

We can prioritise growing for local markets through the subsidy system. We can work to build new affordable farms, as is happening in Powys.

We can build supply chains so that they are owned by farmers so that they keep the profits. And we can set up local food voucher schemes for the least well-off households, like the Alexandra Rose fruit and vegetables voucher scheme, and  Cardiff’s Planet Card.

We need to make sure that food growing keeps our rivers clean, builds nature and reduces carbon pollution – that means focusing on organic and agroecological growing techniques.

We need to build the capacity of communities to look after each other at times when global events cut food supplies and inflate prices suddenly and dramatically. Ten food partnerships across Wales are already building the local connections that are the foundation for community action.

We need an expansion of communal eating, which provides good food much more cheaply and is a foundation of happiness across the world according to the 2025 World Happiness Report.

We can take inspiration from the Danish fællesspisning (communal dining) initiative, recently reported in the UK media. We have huge experience in Wales of festival catering, and many communal cooking facilities, all of which could be recruited into extended use.

We need organisation and leadership. National Government needs to declare a new ‘grow more food’ mission. Tim Lang stresses the importance of a new framework of food rights and responsibilities embedded in law – the right of everyone in Wales to have enough food, the right of communities to buy land and use public land for growing food, the duty of local authorities to provide leadership on food. There are a host of things Welsh Government can do to support a mission to grow more food. It can support horticulture financially. It can change planning policy to allow new farms start. We need an annual National State of Food Security Report, so we can measure progress. Food needs to be brought into the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act, as is already being advocated by the Future Generations Commissioner.

Local authorities have a key leadership role as well. They will say they have no money to do this, but they can follow the example of Birmingham, famously in financial difficulty, by operating through partnerships that can more easily bring in the money needed. Tim Lang’s report, summarised at the website, Food Security Action, sets out the full range of actions needed at local authority level.

Communities have a key role and need support. We need to build a community food resilience toolkit, working with a number of get-up-and-go community councils.

If we don’t grow more food, then we can expect hunger – and when there’s hunger, we know from history that things fall apart.