Welsh food for Welsh people: Letter to the new Minister for Rural Resilience and Sustainability

We wrote to the new Minister for Rural Resilience and Sustainability, Llŷr Gruffydd, on the day he was appointed.

Dear Llŷr,

Welsh food for Welsh people

Congratulations on the historic election result! We will all remember 8^th May 2026 as the start of a new chapter for Wales. And congratulations on your appointment this afternoon as Minister for Rural Resilience and Sustainability.

We want to help you deliver outcomes that make a fast and visible difference to communities.

In the light of the newly emerging and terrible threat of food security driven by the cost-of-living crisis, it is very fortunate for Wales that we have a government that understands farming so well. Your manifesto commitments to stronger support for farmers, growing more food for Wales, supporting new entrants, shortening supply chains, and diversifying growing to include horticulture, are all extremely important for everyone in Wales right now. Securing the food supply of Wales is the big future opportunity for Welsh farmers.

To support a quick start towards action on food security, we have analysed Professor Tim Lang’s comprehensive work on food security and have synthesized his recommendations into nine actions for national government: https://foodsecurityaction.org/national-food-security-9-actions/.

You will be preparing a National Food Strategy. We would like to propose that the strategy is centred around the big food question of the 21^st century: how will we feed the people of Wales? We need Welsh food for Welsh people.

Please consider the creation of a Food Resilience Council that can quickly bring the best minds in the country to this key issue of the 21^st century and deliver something fast. So many of the solutions to your goals already exist in our regions and communities, ready to be mainstreamed.

We would also like to ask if Welsh Government would host a meeting at the Royal Welsh Show on how building food security in Wales can provide new market opportunities for Welsh farms, and how we can work together to realise these changes.

A meeting

We would very much like to meet with you as soon as possible to discuss these issues. We would like to focus on three key things:

• Building markets for Welsh farm produce in our population centres and then rebuilding once vibrant supply chains from our rural to our urban areas, where demand for food is greatest. We are currently working with Birmingham City Council, which has a vibrant food strategy that includes securing food from surrounding farms. We want Welsh cities to adopt this approach. You have a pivotal role in bringing this vital change about.

• Building new farms for new entrants and supporting diversification on existing farms to feed Wales. This needs a new generation of young farmers, which means building farms with homes. As a pilot, we have built three small farms with Powys County Council. It was by far the most popular of any action that that Council has undertaken based on the social media response – everybody wants new farmers and more farms! Now we are working with Clwyd Alyn housing association to plan 100 farms with homes, a breakthrough innovation. A partnership with you would enable rapid development and we would like to propose this as an early flagship project delivering on your manifesto.

• Building long-term home-grown food solutions to expanding food poverty in Wales as food prices are driven up by global conflict and extreme climate events. One of the most interesting examples of this that we have found in Wales is the work of Clwyd Alyn housing association and the social enterprise, Well-Fed.

We would like to come to a meeting with partners working on these issues.

We very much looking forward to working with you to create food and farming programmes that the people of Wales can see clearly, understand immediately, and welcome.

Photo by Joseph Andrews on Unsplash