FARM FUNDING: Welsh farmers promised £1bn over Senedd term in multi-year deal

The family farms of Carmarthenshire and the wider region have been handed the multi-year funding certainty they have been asking for — but the amount on the table is already being challenged as a real-terms cut.

The Welsh Government announced at the Royal Welsh Show on Monday that the Sustainable Farming Scheme will be funded at £340 million a year for three years, until March 2030.

It means Welsh farmers will receive more than £1 billion across this Senedd term, a commitment the Plaid Cymru government says fulfils a pledge made in its first 100 days in power.

Of the annual pot, a guaranteed £238 million goes to the scheme’s Universal layer — the baseline payment most farms will claim — with £102 million for the Optional and Collaborative layers covering environmental and habitat work.

The move ends the year-to-year funding model that has dogged the sector since Brexit. The UK’s departure from the EU stripped away the stability of the bloc’s seven-year financial framework, leaving Welsh farm support to be set one year at a time.

Cabinet Minister for Rural Resilience and Sustainability Llŷr Gruffydd made the announcement — his first major intervention since taking the portfolio — at the showground in Llanelwedd.

“Giving farmers only 12 months’ line of sight to funding is not sufficient,” Gruffydd said. “We know how hard it is to plan and make business decisions without knowing what funding is coming.”

He added: “Farmers told us loud and clear they need certainty and stability — and that is exactly what we are delivering.”

The Minister also announced early moves to cut red tape, following initial feedback from an independent review into the bureaucratic burden on family farms led by John Davies.

Chief among them is a simplification of the Animal Health Improvement Cycle within the Universal layer. From 2027, farmers in an aligned farm assurance scheme will complete a single form covering both assurance and scheme compliance, delivering both from one vet visit.

The Welsh Government also confirmed that applications for Organic Conversion and a “Capital: Production and Efficiency” grant category open from the end of July, with the Small Woodland Creation and Woodland Creation grant windows opening from 20 July.

The Farmers’ Union of Wales, which met the First Minister at the show on Monday morning, welcomed the multi-year commitment while pressing for more.

FUW President Ian Rickman said recent years had brought “significant financial uncertainty” that made it hard for farm businesses to plan. He said the union had consistently called for a five-year funding framework, and that certainty until March 2030 was “a welcomed relief for the family farms of Wales”.

But Rickman signalled the fight over the amount is not over, saying the union would continue to press for an increase to the scheme’s base-level funding “to mitigate any economic impacts and match the policy ambitions of the Welsh Government”.

The opposition went further. Welsh Conservative shadow farming minister Andrew RT Davies said the £340 million figure was the same the sector had received since 2012 and amounted to a substantial real-terms cut once inflation was taken into account.

Davies said farming and environment groups had warned that £500 million a year was needed, and accused the government of finding money for other priorities while failing to “fund Welsh farming adequately”.

Reform Wales echoed the criticism on the figure. The party’s shadow rural affairs secretary Laura Anne Jones said multi-year certainty was welcome “but certainty alone is not enough”, arguing that £340 million still fell “well short of what many farms require”.

Monday’s announcement is the latest chapter in a scheme that has been years in the making. The Welsh Government unveiled the final Sustainable Farming Scheme in July 2025 amid opposition warnings over food security, and last year used the same Royal Welsh platform to launch £33m in transition support for farmers preparing to move onto the new system.

For the farms of Carmarthenshire, mid Wales and beyond, the settlement answers the question of how long the money is guaranteed. Whether it stretches far enough is the argument now taking shape for the rest of the decade.