Completed petition Scrap the ‘Universal Actions’ and payment reductions in the proposed Sustainable Farming Scheme.

The proposed ‘compulsory’ 10% planting of trees & 10% reverting productive land to habitat, will lead to an obvious 20%+ reduction in food produced in wales, jobs losses & businesses overall turnover in an already struggling industry, this will have a huge knock on effect to rural businesses & communities & families overall living standards.
Every universal action increases labour/paperwork & costs to an already strained occupation, yet this is not reflected by increased payments.
Unworkable!

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Calculated predictions from ADAS estimate-
A 10.8% or 122,200 reduction in livestock units.
11% or over 5,500 job losses.
125.3million pound hit to output from the sector.
A 199million pound loss in farm business incomes .
It does virtually nothing for the country's food security, or the future of the agricultural industry.
There has been a huge amount of good environmental work done by farmers through previous schemes that threatens to be lost & reversed due to the simple fact that entering this scheme will lead to a financial reductions , at a time when input costs & expenses have all risen.
The scheme if unchanged will cause many farm closures, especially startup or tenanted farms.
Many of the universal actions point toward the ‘Net Zero’ targets, but at what cost?
A country that can not produce its own food, is not ‘sustainable’ ! This scheme is unsustainable!

https://www.gov.wales/sites/default/files/consultations/2023-12/potential-economic-effects-of-the-scheme-phase-4-universal-actions-modelling-results.pdf

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