NFU Cymru has put forward proposals for an indicator that reflects the food production capacity of Wales in response to a recent Welsh Government Consultation.

The consultation entitled ‘How do you measure a nation’s progress?’ sets out proposals for forty national indicators to measure whether Wales is achieving the seven well-being goals established in the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015.

The new Act is about improving the social, economic, environmental and cultural well-being of Wales and seeks to improve the way in which decisions are made across specified public bodies in Wales. This includes placing a legal requirement on Welsh Ministers to set national indicators for the purpose of measuring progress.

NFU Cymru Rural Affairs Board Chairman Hedd Pugh said, “Given that access to safe, high quality, affordable food is the most basic of requirements for all people in society, we were most surprised to find that not one of the proposed indicators related to food production and our capacity as a nation to feed ourselves.

“This is even more surprising in the context of the future challenges to the global food production system. We know that the global population is expected to expand to an estimated nine billion by 2050 but at the same time competition for key resources including land for food production, energy and water are expected to increase.”

Mr Pugh added, “All these factors must be considered in the context of climate change with rising global temperatures and changing patterns of rainfall and the importance of the need to secure global food supplies increasingly being recognised by governments and policymakers worldwide. The reality is, in future, Wales will become an area increasingly favoured for agricultural production compared with other parts of the world and, as such, we will be required to make an important contribution to our own and global food security.

“The food security/food production capacity of Wales should not be considered as an ‘opt-in/opt-out policy and for the Future Generation Act to be taken forward in a meaningful way then an Indicator that considers food production is critical and has to be prioritised,” Mr Pugh concluded.