Derek Walker, Future Generations Commissioner; Simon Peacock, Cae Felin grower and project manager; Will Beasley, consultant surgeon at Morriston Hospital and Cae Felin director, Helen Nelson, climate and nature director at the Office of the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales.
Derek Walker, Future Generations Commissioner; Simon Peacock, Cae Felin grower and project manager; Will Beasley, consultant surgeon at Morriston Hospital and Cae Felin director, Helen Nelson, climate and nature director at the Office of the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales. Photo by Huw John

Wales needs to take food insecurity seriously and have a plan for feeding the population in the future, says the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales. 

Derek Walker is calling on Welsh Government to support a new generation of local sustainable and healthy food production, with the creation of a long-term national food strategy which he says is urgently needed in the face of an unstable global food system. 

A long-term plan for feeding Wales, he says, is vital to ensure the most disadvantaged people in society, and future generations, can feed themselves and their families. 

Cymru is the only country in the world with a Well-being of Future Generations Act and the Future Generations Commissioner, Derek Walker, has a role to support and challenge public bodies, including councils, health boards and Welsh Government, to protect the future as they tackle today’s problems. 

At an event this Tuesday (April 16), the commissioner is bringing together people to examine how we can protect people in Wales from future food shortages and extreme price rises in an unstable global food system. The effects of a volatile global food system would further exacerbate the challenges of food insecurity, which Wales is already facing.  

Professor Tim Lang, who will speak at the Food Shocks: Is Wales prepared for an uncertain food future? in Cardiff, a joint event with Our Food 1200, says the UK is unprepared for future food shocks, which could lead to empty supermarket shelves and further food price rises.  

Canada and Germany are drafting comprehensive food plans that address resilience, while France requires cities to have plans to feed their populations from their rural spaces and Lithuania and Switzerland have national food reserves. 

In Wales, Bannau Brycheiniog has placed local food networks at the heart of its vision for people’s well-being and protecting nature. Conwy and Denbighshire Public Services Board has committed to developing plans to safeguard food in the future, Monmouthshire have integrated food policies– from farm to fork – into their well-being plans, while Cardiff Council has developed a local Good Food Strategy and is aiming to become a Gold-standard Sustainable Food City.  

Not-for-profit organisation Cae Felin Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is growing crops on land owned by Swansea Bay Health Board near Morriston Hospital, where staff volunteer towards a long-term goal of supporting preventative healthcare by growing fruit and vegetables for patient meals at the hospital, selling food boxes and also providing them for low income areas.

WWF has said the Well-being of Future Generations Act gives Wales the opportunity to adopt a leading role in the UK in developing food policies, within the wider UK context of Brexit and the severe challenges the UK food system faces. 

Derek Walker said: “Food security is a major well-being issue that we can’t escape, and Wales needs a plan for people to have access to healthy, affordable food for generations to come. Food security must be a core part of a new food strategy for Wales that protects all of us in the face of continuing war, climate change and trade barriers against an already spiralling food poverty. 

“We must look after the natural systems that provide our food – the most basic of human needs – and properly planning for how we’ll eat will also tackle some of Wales’ other big problems, while supporting our soils and clean water.  

“I want to see a future where we grow the food that feeds our loved-ones in hospitals and schools, and children can pick apples on their way to school. 

“With innovative thinking, using the permission the Well-being of Future Generations Act gives us to do different things, involving farmers and other experts including community groups, changing the system to adapt to our shifting needs is possible.” 

The commissioner’s seven-year strategy, Cymru Can, calls for better implementation of the Well-being of Future Generations Act and highlights food as a key challenge to unlock progress in achieving Wales’ well-being goals. 

He says a food strategy could include: 

  • A joined-up, national food resilience plan that involves promoting local food systems. 
  • Improving local healthy food supply chains, building on examples such as Carmarthenshire Council which is working on a future generations school food menu made up of local and sustainably-sourced ingredients, or Food Sense Wales’s partnership with Castell Howell to increase the supply of vegetables to Cardiff primary schools from agroecological growers. 
  • More support for Local Food Partnerships, such as in north Powys, where they are developing multi-stakeholder local food networks to address local food challenges.  
  • Involving farmers and making the Sustainable Farming Scheme a key part of a national food strategy. 
  • Putting restoring nature at the heart of everything we do in Wales, supporting a new generation of farming and enhancing community access to land, to increase production of the low amount of fruit and vegetables we grow and consume. The most deprived fifth of adults consume less fruit and vegetables (37% less), than the least deprived fifth, according to The Food Foundation. 
  • Innovative approaches to rural and urban growing to promote more community food growing in Wales.  
  • Ensuring the well-being plans that councils and other public bodies have to publish under the Act,  focus on food and healthy diets. 

Duncan Fisher from Our Food 1200, said:  

“Addressing food security unites interests across Wales – farming, food poverty; rural and urban – as demonstrated by the wide cross-sectoral interest in the meeting today. A food strategy must address the two big food issues of our time, food poverty and the future of our farming.’’ 

CASE STUDY: “People are desperate to get on the land and grow food for themselves and their community but access to that local growing land is a big issue” 

Not-for-profit organisation Cae Felin Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is growing crops on land owned by Swansea Bay Health Board near Morriston Hospital. 

Staff have been volunteering to help the CSA work towards its long-term goal of supporting preventative healthcare by growing fruit and vegetables for patient meals at the hospital, selling food boxes and also providing them for low income areas, while promoting the benefits of improving access to nutritious, locally grown fresh food for all sections of the community. 

Initiatives to establish a more equitable local food system include providing horticultural workshops, outdoor education sessions for local schools (growing, harvesting and cooking food) and holding monthly lunch clubs for hospital staff, via Direct Food Support funding. 

Consultant surgeon Will Beasley is a director of Cae Felin, which is independently run but supported by the health board as part of its wider commitment to a more sustainable future. 

At a seven-acre field leased from the health board, two acres are dedicated to habitat restoration, and members of the community get involved in monitoring species, such as bees, butterfly, building bird and bat boxes, and growing food in the 100-tree fruit orchard and vegetable garden that was converted from grazing land. 

Last year was the project’s first year growing fruit and vegetables and they started with a small round of crops including kale, lettuce, cabbage and berries and now have peas, broad beans, garlic, and 30 varieties of potatoes, as well as crops like ground nuts. 

Crops grown included kale, beetroot, runner beans, broad beans, peas, leeks, onions, garlic, chard, lettuce, tomatoes, cabbage, and potatoes, with an emphasis on diversity, planting many different varieties of each crop (30 types of spuds). Agroforestry rows and perennial strips create wildlife habitat and build in resilience, while adding further complexity to the system, by establishing soft fruit, herbs, perennial vegetables including asparagus, wildflowers, hops, grapes and edible flowers.        

Two local schools visit once a term, while a second programme with rehabilitation patients from the brain injury clinic at the hospital is about to begin and food grown is supplied to the hospital for anyone to use and distributed amongst the community. 

Simon Peacock, project manager and grower, said the project was about reconnecting people with their local food and environment and creating resilience in the food system. Volunteering sessions are open to staff, patients and anyone who wants to get their hands in the soil. 

Simon said: “It’s engaging people, educating children and encouraging people to get their hands dirty and get growing and enabling people to take action on the climate and nature emergency. 

“People are desperate to get on the land and grow food for themselves and their community but access to that local growing land is a big issue. 

“This is an example of a public body and a community organisation coming together to make local growing happen. If others can take a similar role it can fill a gap and help us create a food system that works for everyone.”  

Notes to editors 

Tim Lang  is Professor Emeritus of Food Policy at City University of London, and author of the authoritative analysis of the UK’s defective food system, Feeding Britain: Our Food Problems and How to Fix Them. For years, he’s engaged in academic and public research and debate on the direction of food policy, locally to globally. Professor Tim Lang is currently concluding his major report on food security commissioned by the National Preparedness Commission for the UK. Professor Lang will argue that the UK, Wales included, is unprepared for future food shocks. 

Prof Lang will explain that a vital part of building food security is to diversify our sources of food, so that we are not so dependent on a single highly centralised global wholesale and supermarket system. New, more local, supply chains are needed so that our cities are more substantially fed from the farms in their rural hinterlands.  

Cymru is the only country in the world with a Well-being of Future Generations Act and the Future Generations Commissioner, Derek Walker, has a role to support and challenge public bodies, including councils, health boards and Welsh Government, to protect the future as they tackle today’s problems.   

In November 2023, the commissioner launched his long-term strategy, Cymru Can, putting his team’s focus on five mission areas – ensuring the legislation is working harder and having impact in people’s everyday lives; responding to the climate and nature emergencies; more action to prevent ill health; a well-being economy; and protecting and enhancing culture and the Welsh language.   

In his Cymru Can strategy, he has proposed a food strategy for Wales that addresses diet related illness, sustainable land management, farmers’ livelihoods and food insecurity for low-income households. Future food shocks will exacerbate problems in all these areas. 

Our Food 1200 (ourfood1200.wales) is working in Powys, Bannau Brycheiniog and Monmouthshire to build new and secure food supplies for the region and adjacent cities. The core of its programme is to build affordable farms for a new generation of farmers. 

Huw Irranca-Davies MS, Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change and Rural Affairs will speak at the event, with a cross-party panel of MSs. 

 

ENDS.