Blwyddyn Newydd Dda! Happy New Year! After a challenging 12 months for Welsh agriculture, 2025 will offer an opportunity for some much-needed stability and security for Welsh farmers.

This year will be an important one for the Farmers’ Union of Wales, too, as we mark seventy years since our establishment. A lot has changed since 1955, but ultimately the crucial role of Welsh family farms in producing high quality food, supporting our rural communities, and maintaining the environment, remains as important in 2025 as ever before.

Today, as in 1955, financial viability lies at the very heart of our family farms, and in the short-term, we welcomed the Welsh Government’s commitment in their draft budget last month to maintain the Basic Payment Scheme ceiling at £238m for 2025-2026. We know BPS funding remains crucial for so many Welsh farmers, however it is somewhat disappointing that this figure has seen no uplift again this year to allow for inflation, which has been eroding the value of our BPS payments, in real terms, for the last 10 years.

Looking ahead to 2025, all eyes will inevitably be drawn to the Welsh Government’s statement this summer on the payment and financial modelling for the Sustainable Farming Scheme. The FUW has welcomed the opportunity to play a collaborative role in revising the SFS from the adverse initial proposals - helping ensure the scrapping of 10% tree cover rule, and securing much-needed progress on common land and SSSIs. However, as we’ve made clear throughout, the devil will be in the detail, and the importance of an adequately funded scheme will not only be of paramount importance to the future of our family farms, but for rural Wales as a whole.

Funding aside, 2025 will also see us eagerly await developments from the Welsh Government on both the NVZs review, and the work of the TB Eradication Programme Delivery Plan. Both NVZs and bTB continue to provide huge challenges for the sustainability of Welsh farmers, and working with the sector will be key to address the varying problems stemming from both issues.

Turning to Westminster, from an agricultural perspective much of the recent discourse has focused on the changes to the inheritance tax and APR following October’s Budget. With the frustration and anger within the sector surrounding the changes continuing to boil over, the FUW will continue to press for the UK Government to review these changes, and address the far-reaching detriment they could have on family farms and the farming sector in its entirety.

The upheaval seen in 2024 over the NVZs, inheritance tax, and initial SFS proposals highlight a concerning trend of top-down decision-making by governments at both ends of the M4 - with little consultation or consideration of the farming sector. As 2025 unravels, we can only hope both the Welsh and UK Governments will prioritise meaningful consultation and collaboration with farmers and the agricultural sector - ensuring that the key role of Welsh farmers in producing high quality food, and maintaining the environment, can continue in the face of so many other challenges.