“For as long as there is humanity, there will be agriculture” – those are the words of one of Wales’s greatest modern-day poets, Dic Jones – himself a farmer – and a sentiment shared by all of us who care about the future of farming.
A sentiment, it seems, which is lost on the Labour party currently sitting in parliaments at both ends of the M4 and who appear increasingly out of touch with the needs and challenges of rural life.
My constituency of Ynys Môn is home to hundreds of farms, many run by the same family for generations, their lives and the land intertwined. I speak to these farmers every week and hear their fears for the future, and it saddens and angers me that the Labour First Minister Eluned Morgan cannot seem to say the same.
As someone who claims to have spent her first weeks in office ‘listening to the people’, the pleas of the agricultural community not to pursue policies which pose an existential threat to their way of life are clearly being ignored.
The ill-thought through Sustainable Farming Scheme, controversial NVZ regulations, inaction over TB, the risk posed to food security, and now the punitive inheritance tax policy shows that Labour are desperately ignorant when it comes to the critical........