‘Welsh Farmers deserve our support – but beware of Tory promises’

Catrin Wager – Plaid Cymru candidate for Bangor Aberconwy

Welsh Farmers are not happy, and who can blame them. They are facing a multitude of
challenges from different angles, and they need our support. But let’s be clear, the Tories in Westminster are just as culpable for the challenges farmers are facing as the Labour party in the Senedd.

And while Rishi smiles and speaks platitudes, it’s important to remind ourselves of the Tory track record on empty promises to Welsh farmers.

Let’s start with Brexit. So may promises; spoken by Boris and Nigel, delivered to our homes on leaflets, blazoned on the sides of buses – the promises of Brexit were difficult to miss.

“Not a penny less” was one which sticks in the mind today, and in relation to the agricultural industry, this promise was echoed in the 2019 Tory party manifesto which held a commitment to “…guarantee the current annual [Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)] budget to farmers in every year of the next Parliament”.

Funding

However, this commitment rapidly fell by the wayside, and by 2021 the funding for agriculture in Wales from Westminster was £37 million less than it was in 2019, and by 2025 it is estimated that Welsh agriculture will be receiving ¼ billion less than it would have had the 2019 manifesto commitment been upheld.

Add to that the fact that UK Government funding to replace EU structural funds for Wales is around £750 million short, it looks like we are around £1 billion worse off. That’s a fair bit more than a penny, and a clear example of why you should never trust a Tory.

Another effect of Brexit is that our farmers have lost the ease of access they had to a huge market – Europe, and Conservative attempts to establish new trade deals have been nothing short of disastrous.

For example, the New Zealand Trade deal, tiny in comparison to our former trade with Europe, it’s estimated to add a mere 0.03% to GDP by 2035. But, have a guess what industry it is going to damage, which both the devolved governments and unions warned against – agriculture.

Deal

As the House of Commons Library briefing on the deal explains: “Farming groups and others have raised concerns about the effect of the agreement on the agriculture sector. New Zealand is a competitive exporter of agricultural products. The National Farmers Union (NFU) has said that imports from New Zealand could undercut UK producers due to their cost advantages.

“The Government’s Impact Assessment shows a negative effect on the agriculture and semi-processed food sectors, which are also expected to be adversely affected by the trade agreement with Australia.”

Despite the miniscule wider economic benefits and the warnings of high risk to agriculture, the Tories proceeded with this “historic” deal. Really sounds like the Tories are fighting for our farmers.

Another major issue facing our farmers is the dominance of big retailers in our food supply chain. Supermarkets are, at the end of the day, driven by their profits and in reality, this can lead to some shocking practices that leave food producers without income security.

A petition to ‘Reform the Grocery Supply Code of Practice to better protect farmers’ reached 113,000 signatures last year, and while the petition was mainly focused on horticulture which is less dominant in the Welsh agricultural landscape (just 6.1% of Welsh Agricultural production in 2021), the wording still reflects some of the challenges our farmers face when selling their produce to big retailers.

Petition

Quite simply, the petition asked for legislation to ensure that retailers had to:

• Buy what they agreed to buy.
• Pay what they agreed to pay.
• Pay on time.

It’s hard to imagine an industry that could survive when it’s main customer base is one that demands large scale orders, which can be dropped at a whim. Or one where your main customer can simply refuse to pay the price they had agreed. But this is what farmers face.

The Tories could have changed this in their 14 years in power. They haven’t. So while there are plenty of flaws to the Welsh Governments proposal for the Sustainable Farming Scheme, viewing the Tories in Westminster as saviours should be done with extreme caution.

Frustrations with the Welsh Government should not be confused with frustration with the Senedd. It’s the dominance of one party on the Welsh political landscape, a party that have little empathy or understanding of rural Wales, which is problematic, not devolution itself.

Failure

While it may be easy to look over the border and think the grass is greener in England, it is in fact another devolved government, that of Scotland, who seem to be listening to their farmers and developing a payment scheme that ensures food production is prioritised.

It is exactly this, a failure to recognise and plan for future land use and food security that is a major flaw in the scheme proposed by the Welsh Labour Government, but that’s a story for another day.

For now, my warning would be that while Rishi’s visit to north Wales may have been perfectly timed to tap into legitimate concerns about what is being proposed in Wales, the smiles, the spin, and the lies are things we should all be wary of where the Tories are concerned.

They have a track record of making promises to our farmers in election years. But they don’t have a track record in keeping them.