Sustainable farming scheme - GWCT Cymru response to consultation

The GWCT welcomes the publication of the Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS) in time for discussion at the Royal Welsh Show. We are pleased to be included in the Land Use Stakeholder group and part of the co-design process and are arranging meetings between the farmers that we work with through Wales and the Welsh Government in order to ensure those on the ground are given a voice.

For some farmers, the prospect of managing and enhancing the habitat on 10% of their farm will be easy, but for others it will seem like yet another challenge to an industry in a turbulent time. Dairy farmers face different issues and priorities to upland sheep farmers, for example, and a ‘one size fits all’ approach often leaves many farmers behind.

We are proud to work with farmers to deliver biodiversity and other public benefits that best fit within their own management system, but it is important that the delivery of public goods works alongside food production within profitable farming businesses.

GWCT Wales will be launching its new Farming Community initiative at the Royal Welsh Show. We welcome all to join us at 2pm on Tuesday 19 July at the FUW stand. The Farming Community is built on a network of farmers – some of whom have been involved with agri-environment for many years and others who are at the beginning of a journey – who have a passion to deliver more for biodiversity. Many we have spoken with talk about bringing back the birds and other nature that their grandparents saw on the farm, and it’s clear that they see wildlife as part of Welsh heritage. We are working with farmers who are keen to start or take further steps on a journey of delivering more for nature and are working with us to find ways of doing this alongside profitable farming.

Sue Evans, Director GWCT Cymru, said: “We are not in the business of telling farmers how they should farm – they know their farm and how to produce food. What we can help them with is how to bring more biodiversity to their farms with our three-legged stool approach of overwinter feeding; protection of more vulnerable species, particularly during the breeding season; and providing the right habitat for the species that are in decline or have disappeared.

“Within the work that we do with farmers, we find that they are keen to have more biodiversity on their farms alongside better soil health and water quality. The most important thing the Welsh Government can do in delivering public goods is to give the farmers the opportunity and funding to deliver the outcomes in the way that works best on each individual farm. Nature is complex and we would therefore like to see an adaptive scheme that trusts farmers to deliver the outcomes without strict and confining prescriptive options.”

GWCT Cymru welcomes the intention of Welsh Government in designing the scheme that recognises that our farmers are committed to and have the expertise to deliver Net Zero and to halt and reverse the decline in biodiversity. It is of paramount importance that this is done alongside continued production of high-quality food to high production standards.

The inclusion of an option to grow more crops is encouraging and hopefully will help to not only reduce the amount of feed farmers buy in but also benefit nature. If this includes payments for cover crops, the increased diversity of the Welsh landscape could be a great benefit to birds and other species.

The SFS will be a big change in the way that payments are made to farmers, so the proposed transition period of stability payments, which will continue to be a feature of the scheme throughout and beyond this Senedd term, will be greatly welcomed by farmers. The inclusion of a further consultation on the detailed proposals and the economic analysis allows these important decisions to be made with the farming community rather than imposed upon them. With global food insecurity hitting the headlines, it is essential that we deliver more biodiversity and public goods alongside food production to enable Wales to be as sustainable and self-sufficient as possible.