Only 3% of farmers trust the Welsh government, survey finds

Only 3% of Welsh farmers say they trust the devolved government, according to a poll commissioned by the Country Land and Business Association in Wales (CLA Cymru).

The survey findings come after two weeks of direct action, which saw farmers in Wales gathering for mass protest meetings and a noisy tractor demonstration outside the Wrexham constituency office of rural affairs minister Lesley Griffiths.

Anger was centred on the Welsh government’s Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS), new water quality regulations and the administration’s approach to TB eradication.

See also: Welsh farmers stage tractor protest outside Lesley Griffiths’ office

The CLA Cymru poll found that 87% of farmers questioned thought the SFS environmental land management proposals would not support their business or deliver positive outcomes for the environment.

Only 6% would join the scheme, citing it as “unnecessarily prescriptive and complex”. 

Iain Hill-Trevor, who farms near Chirk, Wrexham, is among those who would shun the SFS in its current form, describing the 17 “universal” actions required to even enter it as “alarming” for many farmers.

He said it was “very hard to treat seriously’’ the SFS consultation process presently under way when it was “hard to see any financial incentive to the universal action outcomes”.

Although in its base form he believed there was “good’’ in the scheme, it had been “massively over-engineered” by the Welsh government.

“The government needs to make it easier for farmers to enter the scheme [for it] to deliver on its core principles,” Mr Hill-Trevor said.

‘Damning evidence’

CLA Cymru director Victoria Bond described the poll’s findings as “damning evidence’’ that rural communities felt “ignored and let down” by the Welsh government. 

With first minister Mark Drakeford due to stand down next month, she added: “The next first minister must govern for all of Wales – not just the urban and industrial parts.”

Post-Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) schemes in England, she suggested, had been improved by “constant collaboration between Defra and rural organisations”.

The Welsh government has said that the aim of the SFS is to “secure food production systems, keep farmers farming the land, safeguard the environment, and address the urgent call of the climate and nature emergency”.

It encouraged responses to the final SFS consultation by the 7 March deadline.