The Welsh government has announced a u-turn on elements of its controversial Sustainable Farming Scheme, including the abandoning of proposals for all farms in Wales to have to set aside 10% of their land for tree planting.
In a statement highlighting interim changes to the post-Brexit farm subsidy scheme this week, Wales’ rural affairs minister Huw Irranca-Davies said the Labour administration in Cardiff had “listened” to feedback from stakeholders across the farming sector.
It had changed “several key areas to ensure the scheme is accessible and practical, providing an opportunity for support to all farms in Wales”, he added.
The compulsory proposal to set aside 10% of land for trees will be replaced a new, voluntary Universal Action for a tree planting and hedgerow creation opportunity plan. “We will support tree planting and hedgerow creation through optional actions and encourage planting on a scheme-wide scale, without a mandatory farm-level percentage target for tree cover.” Irranca-Davies said.
Other changes include merging three animal health, welfare and biosecurity actions into a single simplified action. Payments will now also be made for managing Sites of Special Scientific Interest and areas linked to common land grazing rights, while the total number of sustainability-led actions a farm can be paid for will be reduced from 17 to 12.
The Welsh government’s SFS proposals, and the potential loss of farmland to sustainability projects, prompted significant anger and a series of protests by farmers earlier this year, after the government’s own impact assessment found the scheme could cost 5,500 jobs and up to £199m in farm business income a year.
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“The SFS will serve as the primary source of government support for farming in Wales in the future,” the statement added. “Through listening and partnership working we, along with the stakeholders working with us, believe these changes make it easier for farmers to deliver, while still meeting our commitments to sustainable food production, nature, the environment and climate change.”
The Welsh government said the changes did not amount to a final scheme “and ministers have not made any final decisions on it”. It will now carry out an economic analysis and impact assessment “so that we can understand what the scheme will mean for farmers and wider society”.
The interim changes were welcomed by NFU Cymru president Aled Jones – a vocal critic of the proposals – who said he was “pleased the Welsh government has committed to undertake economic analysis and an impact assessment of the revised proposals to understand what the scheme will mean for farmers and wider society”.
This work was “vital”, with NFU Cymru “clear that the SFS should provide the same level of stability to farm businesses, our rural communities and the supply chain as the Basic Payment Scheme does currently”, Jones said.
“There is much more work to do in the coming months on the final scheme detail as well as a number of fundamental aspects of scheme design, including the payment methodology and payment rates,” he added.
Farmers Union of Wales’ president Ian Rickman, meanwhile, said the announcement “only marks the end of the beginning, and there remains a high level of detail to work through and confirm, with the updated economic analysis and impact assessments of crucial importance”.
The final scheme will be published next summer, ahead of it being introduced on 1 January 2026.
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