Hundreds of tractors blocked a main road into Cardiff and more than 10,000 farmers descended on the Welsh parliament to protest against farming reforms which could cause 5,500 job losses and cut £200 million from the rural economy.
A sea of green wax jackets and placards reading “Enough is Enough” and “No Farmers, No Food” greeted politicians looking out from the Senedd as farmers vowed to “fight for our right to farm”.
One of the loudest cheers of the day came for a fifth-generation farmer who told the Welsh government: “If you don’t start working with us, then this is just the beginning.”
He told the massed crowd standing outside the Senedd in the rain: “I am fed up of being treated like the villain.”
In a separate address, Ian Rickman, president of the Farmers’ Union of Wales (FUW), told the crowd: “The FUW warned the Welsh government not to awaken the sleeping Welsh dragon. Well, the dragon is now well and truly awake.”
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Organisers of the protest said there were 10,000 farmers arriving by coach and more coming under their own steam, making it one of the biggest protests the Senedd has seen.
Pairs of empty wellies were placed in front of the Senedd to represent farming families that protesters fear could be driven out of their businesses and their communities if the Welsh government’s plans go ahead.
Farmers are venting their dissatisfaction with the Welsh government’s proposed sustainable farming scheme (SFS), which will replace direct farm payments from 2025, as well as “restrictive” water-quality regulations and a bovine tuberculosis (TB) eradication policy which has failed to make progress in ten years and refuses to consider targeted badger culling to prevent disease transmission.
To be eligible for the new SFS payments, which many farmers would rely on, farmers would have to ensure that ten per cent of their land has trees and ten per cent is treated as wildlife habitat.
Farming unions argue that this will be unworkable for many and that farming businesses on tight margins will simply collapse.
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Wyn Evans, whose family has been raising sheep in west Wales for 500 years, told the crowd the protest movement began a month ago with a meeting of 1,100 farmers in Welshpool. “We are the mainstay of the rural economy,” he said. “The show of force here today is absolutely overwhelming.”
Addressing reports that far-right groups have been co-opting rural anger, Evans ended his speech by saying: “This is our battle. This is the farmers’ battle and rural Wales’s battle and no one else’s.”
An economic impact assessment of the reforms commissioned by the Welsh government has suggested that if every farm took part in the proposed scheme, 5,500 rural jobs could be lost — representing around 10 per cent of agricultural jobs in Wales — as well as £199 million from farm business income.
Businesses in the rural supply chain would be hit by 122,000 fewer livestock units in the Welsh rural economy — the equivalent of 122,000 adult cattle or more than 800,000 sheep.
Gareth Wyn Jones, 56, the upland farmer and social media personality, told The Times: “The Welsh Labour government are doing exactly the same to the farmers as Maggie Thatcher did to the coal miners. That is some bloody thing to say.”
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After growing protests by Welsh farmers in recent weeks, the Welsh government announced on Tuesday that it would review its agricultural policy.
In a joint statement, Mark Drakeford, the first minister, and Lesley Griffiths, minister for rural affairs, said “potential next steps” would include “ensuring woodland and habitat requirements do not make farms unviable”. They said that alternatives to tree planting to capture carbon, such as soil improvement, would be looked at.
They also hinted that the introduction of the controversial new post-Brexit subsidy scheme could be delayed beyond its planned 2025 start date.
Their statement said that the incoming first minister, who will take up their post on March 20 following a leadership contest, “will want to carefully review the results of the consultation and consider in detail the pace of implementation of SFS”.
The Welsh government has also announced a review of its policies on TB in cattle and agricultural pollution, which are key concerns for many protesting farmers. Drakeford, who is stepping down at the end of this month, said he recognised the “devastation” TB can bring to farming families and vowed to look again at the policy of slaughtering infected cattle on farms.
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He also promised a review of agricultural pollution regulations and announced £20 million of additional funding to help farmers comply with regulations introduced in April 2021 to mitigate the risks of water pollution from agricultural activities.
Speaking in the Senedd chamber, Drakeford said his government was committed to dealing with agricultural pollution, arguing that “in five of the six most affected rivers in Wales, agricultural pollution is the single biggest contributor to the state of the river”. “We cannot look the other way,” he said.
Drakeford recently angered farmers by saying it was not up to farmers how subsidies were spent and blamed those who voted for Brexit for the changes to subsidies. He argued that the farm subsidy scheme was necessary in the fight against climate change.
A Welsh government spokeswoman said that they were committed to “a successful future for Welsh farming”. She said: “We have had a seven-year conversation with farmers to design future farming support and we are committed to continuing to work with farmers to develop the sustainable farming scheme.
“We have been clear: we expect changes to be made following the consultation and we will continue to listen.”
