Help save nature – support sustainable farming in Eryri!

Help save nature – support sustainable farming in Eryri!

Very many thanks to everyone who took part in the e-action we helped organise to encourage the Welsh Government to support sustainable farming in our National Parks and other Designated Landscapes.

The good news is that one hundred of you did so. You helped make it clear to the Welsh Government that people do care about our wildlife and want farmers to be supported in taking simple actions that can make all the difference in creating and maintaining space for nature within the farmed landscape, hand in hand with producing healthy, nutritious food, of course.

There has been both good and bad news since then. On 21 March the newly appointed Minister, Huw Irranca Davies took part in a meeting of the Senedd’s Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee. In questioning a witness appearing before the Committee, Mr Irranca Davies specifically flagged up the option of creating a sustainable farming and designated landscape programme through the optional and collaborative layers of the Sustainable Farming Scheme, which was the key proposal which we flagged up in the e-action. This shows that the campaign has at least raised the issue in the Minister’s mind.

The more disappointing news came on 14 May, when Mr Irranca Davies announced that, following the negative reaction to the Welsh Government’s proposals, the introduction of the Sustainable Farming Scheme would be postponed for a year. The problem here is that we already facing a nature emergency. One in six species in Wales are facing disappearance from the country. The Sustainable Farming Scheme was due to be phased in gradually anyway, and delaying it by another year will mean it will be even longer before nature friendly farmers receive the help they desperately need to farm in ways which will support the recovery of the curlew, the Welsh daffodil or the salmon.