On the 24th February, over three thousand farmers and their sympathisers amongst the Welsh public arrived on the steps of the Senedd to protest at the controversial agricultural reforms being pushed through by the Welsh Government. The catalyst for the backlash was the aspect of the bill which would see farmers have to allocate a tenth of their land to habitat preservation and the planting of trees, whilst simultaneously cutting the monetary grants available to farmers who do not comply with the instruction to allocate land in the way the Government wish them to do. This has resulted in the largest protest in Senedd history on the 24th February and has has been further protests engulf Wales; from the symbolic laying of Wellington boots on the the 6th of March on the steps occupied a mere few weeks prior or the flag-waving activists who took to a bridge in Swansea to voice their displeasure at the agricultural reforms.
The key organisational force behind the recent protests are entitled No Farmers No Food, who found themselves propelled into the spotlight following their appearance outside the recent Welsh Conservative Conference in Llandudno where Prime Minster Rishi Sunak greeted and expresses his sympathies with the group, with Sunak going on to robustly defend the group in Prime Minister’s Questions. To their detractors, No Farmers No Food are nothing more then a tin-foil-hat-cladded crackpot group of conspirators; yet to their supporters and sympathisers they are a credible group spearheading the campaign to oppose the Welsh Government’s controversial reforms. What can be said for certain is that so long as the Welsh Agricultural Bill continues to go through the Senedd, farmers and their unions will continue to oppose in their droves the reforms. Only time will tell as to what effect, if any, the activism of No Farmers No Food will have upon Cardiff Bay policy makers.