New agri-environment scheme needed say NFU
In the past, Wales has been recognised as one of the innovators of agri-environment schemes in Europe through the Tir Gofal Scheme.
But since then, according to the NFU, backwards steps have been taken and regaining that status can only be achieved through a fit for purpose agri-environment scheme.
The National Assembly for Wales’ Environment and Sustainability Committee is currently holding a short inquiry into Glastir.
Bernard Llewellyn, NFU Cymru Rural Affairs Board Chairman said, "we recognise that we now are where we are and we are keen to work with Welsh Government through the current stocktake exercise to make the scheme ’fit for purpose’."
"The Welsh Government policy must be flexible enough to incorporate sustainable intensification of agriculture if we are to meet new global food challenges whilst at the same time preserving biodiversity, the landscape and meet environmental and climate change requirements all at the same time."
The union also said that lessons learnt from previous agri-environment schemes have seemingly been lost.
Mr Llewellyn said, "One of the reasons for the success of Tir Gofal was that it was a mixture of annual and capital payments. The capital investments were spread out over the term of the agreement which is an obvious fundamental weakness of Glastir, which is front loaded with capital intensive projects.
"We have always argued that confidence in any scheme is paramount to get participation and sadly despite warnings to the Welsh Government, the All Wales Scheme without meaningful piloting has backfired".
Other recommendations made by NFU Cymru to the Welsh Government included;
it should not be necessary to keep a stocking diary covering the whole farm nor where prescriptions are based on measurements of grass heights, address the issue of low value of points for existing habitats and features, in recognition of work already done in other schemes, often at the farmers own costs and include dry stone walls and earth banks as point scoring options.
Bernard Llewellyn said "we have continually made the Welsh Government aware of all the issues surrounding Glastir, we hope that as a result of this timely inquiry and as part of the current stocktake exercise our concerns and recommendations will be acted upon and that the Deputy Minister will revisit other suggestions that were rejected following the Rees Roberts Review. I would like to think that by doing this we could regain our status of leaders in Europe on integrating agri-environment schemes with food production".
