Last week was a busy one for the FUW team - amongst the many stakeholder meetings and day-to-day activities, the team also arranged for us to have an excellent presence at the virtual Royal Welsh Show.

We hosted a variety of webinars ranging from the rural housing crisis, climate change, mental health, digital connectivity and farm safety - each and every one of them touched on crucially important issues for our industry and if you weren’t able to join them during the show week, they are also available for you to watch in the members section of the website and of course the Royal Welsh show events pages.

As part of our political engagement work, which stretches far beyond the usual confines of show week, I spoke at the Committee for the Economy, Trade and Rural Affairs webinar. It was an excellent opportunity to highlight that the scale and number of challenges faced by Wales increases with every new Senedd term and that there are some overarching issues that should be a focus, not least the environmental challenges we face.

We should not forget what should be at the heart of the work of the Senedd: the interests of the people of Wales. The people who make our economies and communities tick. The people who elected our Members of the Senedd and make Wales what it is.

The interests of people are often lost in a mist of heady aspirations set out in lengthy policy documents - aspirations we may all agree with, but nevertheless should sit alongside the welfare of people and families, and certainly not obscure or inhibit those interests.

For the 53,000 people who work on Welsh farms and the businesses they support, a key concern is the impact of the Welsh Agriculture Bill that will be considered by the committee.

We of course recognise the need for change, and given the climate crisis who would deny the importance of delivering public goods as a key strategic objective for Wales?

But proposals to date have merely replicated one-dimensional Defra objectives focussed on ‘public goods’, and we have not seen the preservation and enhancement of our family farms, agricultural businesses, rural employment and culture given anything like equal status as a key strategic goal alongside the delivery of public goods.

To borrow a phrase used by our First Minister, protecting the wellbeing of our rural families and communities cannot be left to ‘vapid optimism’ - it must be delivered by design. A central purpose of a domestic Welsh policy should be to mitigate outside effects that are beyond our control.

The impacts of Brexit and trade deals are the most prominent of these, and failure to place the protection of our food producing families and those businesses, communities and environments which rely on them as a central policy objective not only ties our hands, but will exacerbate these impacts.

Mitigating climate change and reversing environmental damage will quite rightly be a focus for the Committee, but as a modern devolved nation it is essential that we take a mature, outward-looking view in what can be a ruthless global trading environment.

Our Welsh landscapes and communities cannot be allowed to become a dumping ground for the sins of the world, while greater volumes of food produced to lower environmental and animal health and welfare standards displace our own food production systems - systems upon which a vast range of Welsh plant and animal species and our distinct culture and landscapes rely.

Linked to all these issues is the ambitious tree planting target shared by all political parties.

In the 20th Century tree planting in Wales led to the social and economic devastation of entire communities, the destruction of vast areas of habitat, the local extinction of innumerable species, and the loss of huge tracts of land to businesses and individuals based outside Wales.

At a time when we are already seeing entire farms being bought up by outside bodies for tree planting, action is needed to ensure the mistakes of the past are avoided at all costs, whatever targets are in place.