On Thursday, February 18 the NFU Cymru County Branch held a successful online meeting with plenty of members contributing, writes Hugh Besent.

It was the first time most had been introduced to our new county advisor, Gwawr Parry.

Before joining NFU Cymru she worked for Genus breeding in Ruthin and HCC in Aberystwyth. We are lucky that she lives locally, on a farm near Llanfair.

Current issues discussed included Nitrate Vulnerable Zones (NVZs), the current animal welfare in transport consultation, the white paper setting out the new Wales Agriculture Bill and flooding in the Severn Valley.

As regards to the all-Wales NVZ, it is imperative that farmers contact their Senedd Members, including those on the regional lists before March 3. Please visit the NFU Cymru website for more information or contact your local NFU Cymru office if you need assistance in sending a letter.

It is ridiculous that agriculture is having to bear the brunt of pollution legislation, when the evidence shows that there has been a reduction of 28 per cent in the number of agricultural pollution incidents in the last three years; less than 12 per cent of waterbodies are failing WFD standards due to agricultural practices and many catchments across Wales have not had a single incident of agricultural pollution in the last 10 years.

The proposed new scheme for supporting agriculture hasn’t changed much, with the emphasis still being on environmental issues.

It is clear that Welsh Government has little regard for all the benefits agriculture brings to Wales including food production and rural employment, heritage alongside environmental enhancement.

Flooding issues are always in the back of the minds of people living on the flood plains. I have been involved with the River Severn since the early 1980s when the NFU Cymru and the CLA used to have regular meetings with the then the National Rivers Authority (NRA) and Severn Trent to try to sort out issues.

Today there seems to be no structure to dealing with flooding and we must we just accept it. Surely this is the wrong attitude to take and if climate change is the cause of more flooding, then we need to be pro-active.

Thankfully in the last period of heavy rain in January, the Clywedog dam did its job, and was not over topped. The dam on the Vyrnwy needs to be looked at and could easily be used for river level control as well.. A proposal from the Environment Agency to dam the Severn on the Welsh side of Shrewsbury cannot be a good thing and will cause more flooding of land around the confluence of the two rivers.