As we approach the 2026 Senedd election, the Countryside Alliance invited party leaders to write an article for our website setting out their party’s vison for rural Wales. We have invited Welsh Labour, Welsh Conservatives, Plaid Cymru, Reform, the Green Party and the Welsh Liberal Democrats. At the time of writing we have only received responses from Plaid Cymru, the Conservatives and Reform.

Here is the response from the leader of Reform UK for Wales, Dan Thomas:

One of the biggest lessons our politicians have ever failed to learn has been the importance of food security. Supporting Welsh and British farmers isn’t just a nice thing to do so support the rural economy, it’s supporting our nation’s ability to feed itself in a crisis. It’s staggering that after Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, politicians at both ends of the M4 decided that farmers should be hammered with death taxes and green targets. 

Any reasonable government would have realised that we need to work with the rural community to not just maintain but scale up their production. That’s why one of Reform’s key pledges here in Wales is to work with farmers and the farming unions to develop a ten year food strategy.

No more top down diktats from policymakers far away in Cardiff Bay. Under a Reform Wales Government, farmers will be partners in delivery, and though our food security strategy we will make be able to ensure that more items in our shopping trollies are insulated from volatile global events.

And speaking of Cardiff Bay, a Reform Government would never leave farmers feeling so let down and powerless that they have to travel in their thousands to the Senedd to protest against subsidy schemes that we know will wipe out 5% in livestock numbers and 16% in farm business income. Incredibly, those are the Welsh Government’s own figures from the scheme they came back with after the protests in Cardiff Bay.

So the Sustainable Farming Scheme will be changed. There are too many unnecessary universal actions and there is too much bureaucracy. The focus will be on food security and rural communities, not green targets. Farmers know how to look after the environment, because in many cases they’ve been doing it for generations. It’s part of the rural way of life.

And while we’re on the rural way of life, we will defend lawful rural pursuits. We have also ruled out a ban on the release of game birds and we will not create a licensing regime for the activity to continue. There is already sufficient legislation and governance to stop bad practice and illegal activity. Labour’s manifesto pledges to increase restrictions on the shooting of gamebirds.

As for young farmers, the next generation who will put food on our tables, we will provide multi-year funding certainty for Young Farmers’ Clubs.

Our approach to the countryside will be represent a change in attitude from the current crop of politicians in Cardiff Bay. Rural communities will be supported to continue to thrive, not hamstrung by lawmakers.

We will reform HCC to make it a farmer-owned, levy-payer-led organisation. There will be directly elected representation for levy payers. Expenditure reports will be published routinely, and funding will be ringfenced for promotion and marketing of Welsh lamb and beef.

We will end the designation of the whole of Wales as a Nitrate Vulnerable Zone and replace it with a catchment-based targeted system and provide capital support for genuinely high-risk areas.

I would encourage everyone across Wales to read our manifesto, which is brimming with much more about the work we are ready to do to back farmers and rural communities. I can’t be sure why or when the political establishment decided that our rural communities should be ignored and hammered with duties and red tape. But what I am certain of is that if Reform wins the Senedd election, that will end.

We will empower our farmers and treat them as partners. And we will ensure that our rural communities can thrive into the future. 

Dan Thomas is the Leader of Reform UK for Wales.