NFU Cymrus president's message for the show

Speaking on the eve of the 2007 Royal Welsh Show, Dai Davies, President of NFU Cymru, puts forward the main challenges currently facing Welsh farmers.

Mr Davies said, "The Welsh Assembly Government's theme for this year's Royal Welsh Show is, I believe, climate change and that is the first challenge which faces us all. When NFU Cymru met the then Minister for Sustainability and Rural Development, Jane Davidson, last month we stressed to her that as an industry agriculture should be regarded as 'part of the solution and not part of the problem'.

"We also told Ms Davidson that profitable farming is in a key position to deliver on the responsibilities within her portfolio particularly climate change, sustainable development, the environment, energy and of course agriculture. But of course, a week is a long time in politics let alone a month and that portfolio has now been split with Elin Jones' appointment as Minister for Rural Affairs. The fact however remains that the farming industry does have the capacity to make a positive difference on all these matters and we look forward to working with them both.

"I must confess, I had reservations with regard to the announcement that the agri-food strategy was to be hived off from the Sustainability and Rural Development portfolio into the Economy and Transport Portfolio since I felt the entire agri-food supply chain should be within one Ministerial remit, indeed I wrote to the First Minister last month to this effect.

"I hope that we can now look to an annulment of the 'divorce proceedings' and that we may see the agri-food strategy repatriated to the Rural Affairs portfolio. The agreement 'One Wales' between the Labour and Plaid groups has a commitment to 'set in motion a major initiative on local food procurement'. I hope that the new coalition Government will deliver in tangible terms on this pledge.

"I have drawn to the attention of the Welsh Assembly Government the potential to secure major contracts for the supply of Welsh food to the St Athan defence training academy where there is the prospect of the development of the largest restaurant in Europe. We need to be considering now how food chain partnerships can be developed and I am issuing a challenge to Assembly Ministers today to grasp this opportunity for the good of Wales PLC.

"The Assembly's priorities are mitigating climate change and sustainable production, let us lead the way in Wales by developing and delivering an integrated and meaningful local food procurement strategy rather than just talking about it. It is time to build on the NHS Trust initiative, that is good, but we have to move on from this and rather than talking about 'food production' as if it's an old fashioned policy which is no longer relevant or necessary we need to capitalise on the very positive contribution we have to make. The fact is people still need to eat and demand for quality food that has been sustainably produced should be largely fulfilled locally.

"The Assembly had intended this week to launch its strategy for the dairy sector, but I now understand that this has been postponed. I hope, however, in due course, that this will reflect some of NFU Cymru's key conclusions and recommendations which were actually endorsed and supported by the Assembly's cross party Environment, Planning and Countryside Committee following our submission to them of both written and oral evidence just prior to the elections. NFU Cymru's view is that we should look at lessons to be learned from Bord Bia in Ireland in terms of developing the Welsh Food Sector and so as to further develop the profile and identity of Welsh food.

"I just want to finish on the Welsh Food Strategy with a quote from Professor Kevin Morgan, from Cardiff University, whose opinion on the Welsh food sector I respect enormously. Kevin recently produced a paper entitled 'Greening the realm – sustainable food chains and the public plate'. In this paper he argues that the public provision of food is, "A litmus test of the state's commitment to sustainable development in the fullest sense of the term because, depending on the nature of the provisioning it can address social justice, human health, economic development and environmental goals, the main domains of sustainable development. But he concludes that the British public sector finds itself torn between very different political pressures. At the rhetorical level there is a growing official commitment to sustainable procurement, so much so that the government has formally committed itself to becoming one of the leading European practitioners by 2009, a policy that is rationalised in value for money terms. However, the public sector is also being subjected to the 'efficiency message' and this is a much more powerful pressure because it is easier to understand, easier to implement and its results are easier to measure, Although Whitehall insists that' efficiency gains' are not to be confused with budget cuts , the latter are invariably interpreted to be synonymous with the former, and this false equation constitutes the biggest single impediment to the development of sustainable public procurement. While public procurement is belatedly being modernised, then this is occurring within a cost-cutting, rather than a value-adding business model."

"My simple message to Ministers given the Welsh Assembly Government's commitment to a major initiative on sustainable development and local food procurement is: move on from the rhetoric, recognise the value adding potential of local food supply where all three dimensions of sustainable procurement can be satisfied (economic, social and environmental) as an industry we want to work with you in partnership for a 'win win' situation."

Dai Davies also feels that TB is a continuing challenge for the farming industry. He said, "I make no apology for commenting on this yet again, because for huge and ever increasing tracts of Wales, this issue now dominates our lives and has the potential to become all consuming. The costs of an ineffective strategy for dealing with bovine TB is becoming totally prohibitive for both the industry and Welsh Assembly Government and has the potential to stall and undermine all the positive developments within the sustainability and rural development portfolio that the industry could be contributing to.

"The Independent Scientific Group report was a bitter disappointment and its conclusion that infected 'badger culling can make no meaningful contribution to cattle TB control in Britain' does not sit consistently with the findings that repeated culling can be beneficial and its admission that the RBCT (Randomised Badger Culling Trials) was not designed to test the impact of boundary permeability and 'thus currently available data shed no light on whether a proactive culling policy would be more beneficial if conducted in more geographically isolated areas'. Yet trials conducted in Thornbury Steeple Leaze, Hartland and East Offaly all point to this!

"I believe there is a clear and unequivocal case for a trial in Wales where there is thorough regular culling of infected badgers over relatively large areas, bounded by hard physical boundaries and I hope that the Minister will review all the science available on this issue and support such an approach. We simply cannot afford to put off painful decisions any longer.

"Certainly, this is the message that NFU Cymru will deliver to the Assembly's Rural Development Sub-Committee onWednesday when it meets to take evidence at the show on the ISG report and the implementation of the EPC Committee's recommendations on TB."