Clearly an uncertain road ahead
I WOULD like to start off with wishing all of you a happy new year and hope you managed to enjoy the Christmas period with loved ones close. As we enter a new year in which we all hope to return to some kind of normality, the UK’S genuine departure from the European Union after a lengthy divorce suggests 2021 will be anything but normal, irrespective of what progress is made in tackling the current coronavirus pandemic.
We all breathed a collective sigh of relief after the UK and EU finally reached agreement on Christmas Eve – and thereby avoiding the nightmare of tariffs that would have reduced farmgate prices for some products by 30% or more. But as of January 1 we will nevertheless start to see the impacts of non-tariff barriers which will make 2021 difficult to say the least for many Welsh businesses.
One of those difficulties will be the Export Health
Certificates, which are required by food manufacturers to export products to the EU. They will cost around £150 to £200 each, meaning the UK bill for certificates alone is expected to be between £45 million and £60 million in 2021.
The new year will also bring much debate over the future direction of Wales’ agricultural and rural policies, following the publication of the Agriculture (Wales) White Paper consultation in mid-december last year.
While the paper highlights many of the concerns we all share, the proposal is to make public goods payments the only revenue tool available to meet economic, environmental and social sustainable development objectives.
We have been blunt in highlighting how unimaginative the Welsh Government has been. So rather than seeing a blank canvas, looking at what Wales wants to achieve, then designing a system and the necessary tools to deliver these, they have copied this one-dimensional decades-old Defra concept and are trying to fit Welsh policy objectives around it.
We have previously deviated significantly from English policies, much to Defra’s disappointment and our benefit. And we should continue to do so, just as Scotland and Northern Ireland are making the most of their devolved powers and forging ahead with their plans to use multiple tools to deliver what is needed for their own agriculture and rural communities.
We clearly have an uncertain road ahead of us in 2021, whether in terms of the pandemic, our new trading relationships with the EU and other countries and blocs, or the discussions on our future domestic rural policies, but whatever happens the FUW is confident we can secure a bright future for Welsh agriculture.