Welsh farming plan is woolly thinking
aS a Welsh farmer, I found Guy adams’s article about our protests (Mail) an excellent read. lamb is far and away the most important, iconic product in rural Wales. It is known globally for its excellent quality. yet the Welsh government’s Climate Change Minister, Julie James, is a vegetarian, so she obviously has no empathy with Welsh sheep farmers and no sympathy for their plight. It’s like putting an atheist in charge of the Vatican. No wonder she wants to replace 20 per cent of pasture land across Wales with forestry and rewilding.
This will decrease production of Welsh lamb and beef and cause great hardship and unemployment. Jobs will disappear in our rural towns, villages, hotels, pubs, restaurants, food factories, vets, agricultural suppliers, abattoirs, garages, milk factories and processing plants — and for what? Trees that will take about 30 years to grow from saplings, so they will absorb very little CO2 for the next 15 years.
Not long ago, the same Welsh government, via Natural resources Wales, felled 1,938,400 healthy trees to create wind farms, according to information obtained under Freedom of Information rules.
Now 18 more wind farms with gargantuan 820ft wind turbines are proposed across the Welsh hills, which will entail the removal of millions more trees. as much of this will occur in the catchment areas of important crossborder rivers such as the Severn and the Wye, expect many more flash floods downstream in Shrewsbury, Tewkesbury, Hereford and Gloucester, among other places, as absorbent forest, gorse and peat lands are replaced by non-absorbent concrete and Tarmac.
Mr LYN JENKINS, Gwbert, Ceredigion.