Net Zero Creating Jobs In ‘Farming’

Bit of a departure, this one. Or maybe not. It’s more ‘planet saving’ bullshit; with one example dressed up as feeding the masses, the other somehow helping a housing association.

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BACKGROUND

In twenty-seven years of mismanaging Wales Labour had a twin-track approach to agriculture. On the one hand, real farming was attacked and undermined; while anything that could be presented as an alternative, an improvement, was promoted.

This was justified as ‘saving the planet’, either by mitigating the damage done to the environment by traditional Welsh livestock farming (farting cows and all that), or else by bringing new life to rural areas. Often combined.

Pure, naked Globalism. For the elites that control our politicians want the land for themselves, and they also want to control what we eat. Not so long ago we were being told to eat insects. What happened to that campaign? Short answer, it was bollocks; nutritionally and in other ways, and the truth caught up with it.

But let’s not forget that control of the food supply is part of the ultimate power grab.

To sell this power grab to slimeball politicians always looking to appear virtuous the Globalists dreamed up anthropogenic climate change, net zero, and the UN’s Agenda 2030. For everything is predicated on, and flows from, climate change.

More importantly, what we are being forced to do to combat this wholly contrived threat.

The driving force in Wales was someone who’s appeared here regularly, Jane Davidson. She attended the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. But why was she there?

A privately-educated woman who’d drifted to Wales and was so well-in with the Labour establishment that after serving on Cardiff city council for a while she was gifted the safe Labour seat of Pontypridd in the first Welsh Assembly elections of 1999.

In the Labour-Plaid coalition of 2007-2011 Davidson was Minister for the Environment and Sustainability.

She is the self-confessed author of the Well-being of Future Generations Act 2015. This is no exercise in wishful thinking; for it influences almost every aspect of Welsh life. Everything must conform to its dictates.

Which brings me to the first recognisable example of what we’ll be looking at in a minute. And it pre-dates the Future Generations legislation. This was One Planet Developments (OPD). Covered under Technical Advice Note (TAN) 6. Which encouraged individuals, families, small groups, to buy or acquire a small plot of land, live off-grid, and be self-sufficient.

Often retrospectively legitimising existing rural slums.

Like so many of the previous ‘Welsh Government’s worst ideas this one originated with, or was helped along by, outfits based in Bristol.

Land Use Consultants is still in business and doing quite well. In fact, the most recent accounts report a turnover of more than £24 million with some £12.7 million spent on 324 employees.

But the Positive Development Trust CIC is long gone. It was launched September 23, 2011 and Dissolved on Christmas Eve 2013. Almost as if it came into existence solely to promote OPD in Wales. Does anyone recognise a name among the directors?

One Planet Developments may have been pushed (insincerely) as some alternative kind of farming, but in reality it attracted superannuated hippies, good-lifers, and others with barely a clue about rural living.

There are still some new OPDs cropping up, but the idea never really took off. Though it might have morphed . . .

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FEEDING THE BRUMMIE MASSES

Now we’re heading to Wern farm, near Sarn, which is east of Newtown, Powys. In fact, very close to the border. Which is convenient for all involved. Here’s a recent report from the Lanyard-wearers Bugle.

This land is owned by Powys county council, currently led by Lib Dem Jake Berriman, mentioned in the article just linked to. Berriman may not long have been in Wales, for someone of the same name was CEO at Shropshire Housing Group.

Though the project was opposed by Kerry, the community council involved. Which just last year held a packed public meeting . . .

 . . . in response to growing concerns about Powys County Council selling off parts of its tenanted farm estate.

Selling or renting them to well-funded pressure groups, hippies, and good-lifers.

Wern launched as the ‘Welsh Government’s Future Farms Pilot, which was . . .

 . . . established to test a practical and scalable model for enabling new entrant horticultural businesses to access land, secure affordable on-site homes and supply local markets in Powys and wider Wales.

So where in Wales is Birmingham?

Also mentioned in the Guardian article is Our Food Trust, a new one on me. So who are they? Here’s their website, where they tell us they’re:

Building 100 affordable farms growing food agroecologically for local and regional markets.

Advocating that Welsh Government addresses the food security threat decisively, through the new Food Strategy currently being developed.

It’s found in Crickhowell, Abergavennyshire, and is a registered charity. The first trustee named is George James Stewart Wallis. He can also be found as a trustee of the London-based Wellbeing Economy Alliance.

But who’s that there with him? Why! it’s Sophie Howe, former Future Generations Commissar for Wales. As for the other trustees, your guess is as good as mine. But I don’t think they’re from round by ‘ere.

Going back to Our Food Trust, the second trustee named is Holly Tomlinson. Next is 94-year-old James Steuart Skinner. (Any relation to James Scott Skinner?) Finally, there’s Christopher Albrecht Bielenberg; born in 1942 to an anti-Nazi German father and an Anglo-Irish mother. He seems to have dabbled offshore, because he gets a mention in Offshore Leaks.

But running the show, as joint-CEOs, are Duncan Fisher and Sue Holbrook. Both have generously moved to Wales so that we might benefit from their wisdom.

Also giving support is another gang of grifters at Cynnal Cymru. Funded of course by the ‘Welsh Government’.

But let’s not overlook support from the Landworkers’ Alliance. I’ve never been able to take this lot seriously. Middle-class English envirogrifters – playing at being peasants!

I read some of their output a few years back and I couldn’t help laughing. It conjured up images of moustachioed hombres wielding machetes, marching off to have it out with the local representative of United Fruit. Laughable.

I don’t want to spend any more time on this nonsense, because that’s what it is. It’s being funded and justified as a move towards making Wales more self-sufficient in food – but most of it gets shipped to Birmingham.

In fact, Lydia Dibben, one of the ‘farmers’, is quoted in the article saying:

Because of the cost of living crisis, there’s a limited amount of people who can afford to buy the veg we produce, and we are growing a hell of lot more than we can sell locally.

Locals can’t afford the organic produce of Wern farm – so it’s shipped off to Brum where it’s bought – with public money – by the council, for local schools, etc.

Finally, a big attraction of these allotments is that each can have its own accommodation. These count as temporary rural dwellings, and are allowed under Technical Advice Note (TAN) 6, of October 2012.

This, you might recall, was what legitimised One Planet Developments. Which is why I suggested earlier that the faltering OPD idea might have morphed.

Late News: The ‘Welsh Government’ wants more Wern farms according to this put out last week. Mentioned is Ystadau Cymru (Wales’ Estates), another outfit I’d never heard of. Here it is, talking about ‘Community Asset Transfer’.

In practice, this will mean transferring an asset away from the local community to an organisation or individuals favoured by the Corruption Bay in-crowd.

Note the info came just five days after the Guardian piece. Pure coincidence!

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DOWN TO ZERO

Let’s start this section with an article from Nation.Cymru before delving into the truth about this lot. It’s another about growing food, and distributing it to the needy. And it’s received funding as part of a £4.8m package from the ‘Welsh Government’.

There may also be funding from the National Lottery.

So who or what is Down to Zero? Let’s start with the website. You’ll see it’s linked with Cynon Taf Community Housing Group. Based in Abercynon and serving mainly the central valleys.

The founding members were Labour councillor Barry Stephens and John Beresford Chown of leftist think tank the Bevan Foundation.

The image above shows baskets of locally-grown food of the type presumably being delivered. A kind of socialist Deliveroo. (And seeing SM Sioned Williams there means every delivery will come with a lecture on ‘trans rights’.) For those of you wondering about the bananas, they’re a staple crop on the slopes of the Cynon valley.

On the website, we’re met with:

More carbon dioxide (CO2) is now being released than the earth’s land-based plant life and oceans can naturally reabsorb. The excess carbon dioxide has formed a blanket in our atmosphere – trapping the sun’s heat and changing our climate . . .

Truth is, without carbon dioxide all life on Earth would die. More of it means deserts greening and plants growing faster. But this ‘carbon capture’ nonsense is part of the bigger climate scam.

“Trapping the sun’s heat“? Is CO2 being blamed for the ‘heatwaves’ this summer?

Down to Zero is registered with the Financial Conduct Authority as a Community Benefit Society. Registered in August 2022. So let’s check the latest accounts, up to March 31, 2025.

One of the first things to catch my eye was (page 4): “The deficit for the year increased from £16,976 in 2024 to £46,924 in 2025“. Mmm. Looks like the new funding is badly needed.

Despite the increasing deficit, administrative costs jumped – nay, leapt! – from £148,835 in 2024 to £246,167 in 2025. The rest of the financial picture is an equally dismal read.

For example, the amount owed to creditors almost doubled in the same period, from £161,638 to £321,897.

Maybe it’s accounted for by this, also from the Down to Zero accounts (page 6, 7B2):

This year, we were pleased to complete on the purchase of 27 acres of wetland and broadleaf native woodlands in Aberdare, known locally as Cwmbach Wetlands. This is an area of significant carbon stores, biodiversity and natural beauty which is loved by the community. Our work in this area is a leading example of asset-based community development and we are committed to working with Cwmbach Community Wetlands Ltd

Google AI gives more details (below). What a wonderful arrangement, it could be described as circular scammery. Pen y Cymoedd windfarm community fund donated £40,000. So those raking it from wind turbines dish out a little dosh to others lower down the food chain, justified – cos they is all saving the planet!

And one way or another – you are paying for it all!

Purchased in July 2024 for £80,000 by Cynon Taf Community Housing Group via its subsidiary Down to Zero, with a £40,000 contribution from the Pen y Cymoedd windfarm community fund.

This land is now leased to Cwmbach Community Wetlands

Something that causes me to wonder is that Cwmbach Community Wetlands began life before Down to Zero. The former 15.12.2021, the latter 22.08.2022.

Presumably the newt botherers were already active at the site. So why would a housing association, through a subsidiary supposedly supplying food to the widows and orphans of the parish, buy and then lease, 27 acres of wetland?

Shouldn’t a housing association focus on, well, I don’t know . . . housing?

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CONCLUSION

You’ll note that in the above discussions about food there was no mention of meat. There’s a reason for that.

To pursue and promote their agenda of destabilising, dividing, and impoverishing the West the twin-strategy of net zero and open borders guarantees the support of leftists, ‘environmentalists’, religio-imperialists, and others.

Globalists have also recruited an eclectic band of camp followers and useful idiots.

Ranging from assorted sexual perverts and deviants, to anti-car cycling fanatics, and of course – vegans. Vegans were once harmless eccentrics who didn’t bother anyone. Nowadays they’re encouraged to be more assertive, to the point where eating meat is damned as a sign of toxic masculinity! (Eating meat in a caff with veggies nearby probably qualifies as a microaggression.)

Something else that’s changed is that veganism and vegetarianism used to be about the animals. Now we’re told we should give up meat to save the planet. Another example of Globalism recruiting, and ‘re-focusing’, groups and causes to serve the agenda.

AFTERTHOUGHT 23.09.2026: Vegetarianism and veganism had to be ‘re-focused’ because if it was about the animals then they’d have to oppose halal slaughter. But defending and promoting Islam is a vital element of the Globalist agenda. So the cruelty involved in halal gets a free pass.

On a more venal level, and as I mentioned earlier, livestock farming holds vast acreages of land – that Globalists could own, and profit from. Pretending that ‘farming’ can be shrunk to allotments, and we can survive on their produce will, it’s hoped, serve that agenda.

The other factor to consider, certainly with the second example, is that one thing Labour was good at over 27 years of devolution was cronyism. That is, using public money to create pointless jobs for party loyalists, and to fund their organisations. To the point where there are now hundreds of these organisations and thousands of jobs – and we wouldn’t miss them if they all disappeared tomorrow.

Let’s be honest. These allotment-‘farms’ are a virtue-signalling joke. But the ‘Welsh Government’ wants more of them. So they’ll buy land, or councils will use the farms they own – that should be the first rung on the ladder for young, Welsh, farmers.

As we already see at Bremenda Isaf, in Plaid Cymru-run Carmarthenshire. A 100-acre, council-owned farm. Said to be next-door to the local Plaid MP, Ann Davies. Fancy!

It makes no sense. Until you realise it’s all being done to serve a darker agenda.

An agenda that’s becoming clearer by the day.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

Buy Me A Coffee

Back to the Land!

After taking August off (and enjoying the break) I’m back to report on an event planned for later this month.

In fact, I enjoyed the break so much, and found writing this such hard going, that it might be a while before the next piece appears.

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HOW IT BEGAN

A couple of weeks ago someone sent me news of a gathering to be held in the Community Centre, Knighton, on September 17, when many of us will be nursing hangovers from celebrating Glyndŵr’s Day.

Knighton Community Centre has been mentioned on this blog before, after falling into the clutches of white settler Labour activists; who now wage war on local farmers, welcome refugees to an area where they themselves are not universally welcome, and generally play latter-day left liberal colonialists.

For no longer is it Bible and bullets, now it’s saving us through a combination of uplifting sermons from the Rev Monbiot and those organic thingeys they eat at Felicity’s aerobic knife-throwing class.

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But I digress.

To expose the dishonesty behind this event I shall go through those named as being involved before concluding with . . . well, my conclusions. What else?

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CAMPAIGN FOR THE PROTECTION OF RURAL WALES (CPRW)

Let’s start with some background. The CPRW has been pootling along for almost a century as a charity, but now things are changing. Most significantly, with the formation of a company in late May this year.

Though I’m assured there’s no significance to this other than the trustees ensuring they are not personally bankrupted by legal action against the CPRW.

Which also means that, at the moment, the CPRW has two charities with the same name registered with the Charity Commission. One will soon be closed.

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Previous CPRW presidents have included politician Megan Lloyd George and BBC broadcaster Wynford Vaughan Thomas. Clough Williams Ellis, of Portmeirion fame, was also deeply involved for many years as both chairman and president.

The current president of the CPRW is TV celeb Jules Hudson, who is believed to live in Herefordshire. Possibly Hertfordshire. But definitely not Wales. He’s famous for programmes like Escape to the Country and Countryfile.

In his favour, he has a Labrador called Iolo.

The chair of the Brecon & Radnor branch is Jonathan Halsey Luke Colchester, who has recently moved to Clyro. From where he runs his company, Courtenay Advisers Ltd.

I am informed by a very reliable source that the Brecon & Radnor branch of the CPRW is particularly hostile towards farmers.

That being so, why is the local CPRW branch organising a bash with the title ‘Welsh Food & Farming’? The answer to that question will become clear as you read on.

There are farmers, and there are farmers.

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THE FERTILE CRESCENT

One of the CPRW’s recent recruits is associated with another new outfit, Friends of the Upper Wye (FUW), registered with the Charity Commission in March this year. (Though I’m assured she’s an admirable and well-intentioned lady.)

This will no doubt complement the Wye & Usk Foundation (WUF) which is about a lot more than just angling. The WUF is based in Talgarth, close to Coleg Soros.

Over the years the WUF has received millions in funding from or via the ‘Welsh Government’, much of it handed over by an official whose attitude to money might have been compared by my dear mamgu to that of an inebriated seafarer.

An amazing episode, with apparently no oversight whatsoever. It is even suggested that some favoured bodies didn’t even need to make an application – it was a case of, “Would you like some more money?”

OK, so it’s not exactly a crescent, but did I ever claim to be an artist? Click to open enlarged in separate tab

For the Fertile Crescent formed by the Usk and the Wye is something of a magnet for those seeking to save us benighted natives from ourselves. And for others with even less noble intent.

There’s yet another organisation, formed last year, in the Welsh Rivers Union (WRU), based on the Usk at Llanvihangel Gobion. This claims to be a collective of ‘citizen-funded’ community groups defending our rivers.

If it gets airborne it will be made up of the usual ‘community groups’ composed of people who were living somewhere else not so long ago.

Though as yet, it’s not registered as either a company or a charity. It may be just a website, and a Twitter account.

Oh, I almost forgot Afonydd Cymru Cyf, also based in Talgarth. Where income from government grants leapt like a returning salmon from £10,000 in 2018 to £894,704 in 2020.

Afonydd Cymru’s chair is Viscount Christopher Mills, of Kensington, who served as regional director of the Environment Agency in Wales (before the creation of Natural Resources Wales). Among the trustees is Joe Pimblett, CEO of the Severn Rivers Trust, based in Worcestershire.

When it comes to the Fertile Crescent even the Blesséd Monbiot has made a film, Rivercide (what a wit!), in which one of the supporting cast was Lesley Griffiths (sans Gary), and she reminded us that no matter what the facts may say, it’s always farmers wot we must blame.

St George thought the culprits were chickens, which appear at number 2, after humans, in his forthcoming opus, ‘Species To Be Exterminated If We Are To Save The Planet’. (Chickens have apparently deposed sheep in Monbiot’s demonography.)

Why this obsession with the Usk and the Wye? Is it because they’re close to Bristol? Or is their cross-border nature, demanding ‘co-operation’, the attraction?

Of course, there are rivers within Wales in far worse condition than the Wye and the Usk, so why are these ignored? Three reasons, perhaps.

First, these other rivers run through more populated areas with few stretches of open country attractive to those in search of a rural idyll, or intent on ‘habitat restoration’ (aka ‘rewilding’).

Second, while there may be areas meeting the criteria further west, there the Welsh language would be a consideration. And after the resistance to Summit to Sea the land-grabbers are wary of getting another bloody nose.

Third, they are entirely within Wales.

Never lose sight of the fact that for many, water quality is a stalking-horse, used against farmers so as to free up their land for other purposes. And the ‘Welsh Government’ wholeheartedly supports this agenda.

UPDATE: Here’s a recent example of pollution on the Wye that clearly has nothing to do with farmers.

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LOCAL GROWERS AND FARMERS

A source informs me that the ‘local grower’ is the bloke from the organic food shop in Knighton, where you buy the knobbly carrots and the misshapen parsnips. Ach y fi!

(Though there may be others attending, more deserving of the billing.)

As for the ‘local farmers’, it seems these will both come from Herefordshire, which may be fairly local to Knighton (/Tref y Clawdd) but are not, unless we want to be irredentist about this, Welsh.

More pragmatically, whether we view Herefordshire as the ‘lost lands’ or not, the area will not be affected by any legislation or initiatives emanating from Corruption Bay.

Even so, to help give a fuller flavour of the event, I’ll tell you who they are.

One is ‘RegenBen’, of Townsend Farm, near Ross-on-Wye. Which, as the name suggests, is on the River Wye. Ben is a director of the Oxford Farming Conference, an organisation I’m told represents big landowners, yeoman farmers and the like.

(I was also told that a famous Welsh farmer went there to speak a few years ago, and has never felt more out of place.)

The makeup of the Oxford Farming Conference probably explains why a rival was set up in 2010 called the Oxford Real Farming Conference.

From what I can see the older body caters for those with inherited land while the upstart is more attractive for Greens looking to get their hands on someone else’s land. I wouldn’t be comfortable with either.

The other ‘local farmer’ is from ‘Wild by Nature’, of Lower House farm, just over the border from Llanthoney, close to Llanveynoe. (These corrupted spellings!)

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Looking at a map I see that both of them are close to the border, but neither is particularly ‘local’ to Knighton. The first is roughly 45 miles away, the second almost 50.

I suspect that both have been invited because they are well-connected, and have diversified into ‘artisanal’ food produce and other activities.

The Rhug Estate model, if you like.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve stopped many times at the Rhug restaurant and shop, and like some urchin from a Dickens novel gazed at goodies I can’t afford.

Rhug Estate shop. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Though ‘farm shop’ really is a misnomer. It suggests Mrs Evans in a shed at the bottom of the farm drive selling goods cheaper by cutting out the middle man. In reality it’s a place where the price of everything is marked up.

Few locals can afford to shop there. That’s why the Rhug ‘farm shop’ is on the A5.

Even so, I’m sure a farm shop can be a nice little earner, and so I wasn’t surprised to learn that ‘Wild by Nature’ already has one. While RegenBen’s website tells us: ‘Our plans are to share the fruits of our labour by opening a farm shop’.

There are of course some excellent farm shops in Wales. One is Bargoed Farm / The Moody Cow, near Aberaeron, run by the former owners of Gilestone Farm, and visited very recently by Conservative Senedd leader Andrew R T Davies MS.

But how many farm shops can Wales support?

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SOIL ASSOCIATION

The Soil Association, headquartered in Bristol, is another of those English organisations that recognises the existence of Scotland, but not Wales. We, presumably, are part of England.

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The Soil Association is registered as both a company and a charity. And with an annual income of over £23m it is no shoestring outfit. Of course the Scottish Soil Association is registered separately in Scotland.

In addition, there is The Soil Association Land Trust ‘established to acquire and maintain farmland sustainably’. Which might be worth bearing in mind, and could explain The Soil Association’s interest in Wales, a country I’m sure it will quickly recognise if the ‘Welsh Government’ offers to buy it a farm.

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NATURE FRIENDLY FARMING NETWORK

The company of that name was launched in July 2018. Though there has been quite a turnover of directors in the four years since then. Of the eight original directors, five have left, including two who were obviously Welsh.

NFFN has an impressive website, telling us of a Welsh Steering Group, with two group members serving as directors.

Here’s a page giving some responses from the Welsh Steering Group to the ‘Welsh Government’s Sustainable Farming Scheme that emerged in July.

Hilary Kehoe, the Chair, mentions the ‘changing climate’. Rhys Evans thinks the ‘devil will be in the detail’. But Hywel Morgan was ecstatic. I was not surprised to learn that Hywel is involved with the ‘Welsh Government’s Farming Connect scheme.

The Nature Friendly Farming Network is looking to hire a £29,000 a year Communications Officer. Having recently recruited a Farmer Engagement Officer on the same salary. But who’s funding these posts?

For the financial situation is not impressive. I appreciate that it’s a company limited by guarantee, but even so, I would have expected to see more than £69 in the kitty. Which is what the latest accounts (to y/e 30.06.2021) show.

Yes, NFFN has assets of £199,317, but this sum is exceeded by money owed to creditors.

On the ‘Nature Means Business‘ page we read: ‘Right now, farm businesses are facing a multitude of challenges: climate change, unpredictable weather patterns, changes to future farm payment schemes and adjusting to new consumer demands’.

To prioritise ‘climate change’ (when it’s becoming clear that climate change has been – at the very least – exaggerated), and then virtually repeat it with ‘unpredictable weather patterns’, before mentioning farm payments, is revealing.

With no mention at all of the threat from mandatory afforestation, farms being bought for greenwashing, and restrictions applied by politicians and administrations that are blatantly anti-farming.

These priorities are evident throughout the website. The image below is from the Fund Us page. And again it’s ‘climate in crisis’, ‘wildlife declining’, ‘habitats being lost’.

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The Nature Friendly Farming Network seems to be an environmental organisation that recruits farmers. There’s nothing wrong with that, farmers care deeply about the environment that provides livelihoods for them and their families.

But it’s a question of priorities. The first of which has to be supporting farmers – who will then look after the environment. 

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STUMP UP FOR TREES

This organisation has appeared on this blog a number of times, so I won’t dwell on it again.

Based in Abergavenny Stump up for Trees is a greenwash outfit. It’s registered as a charity, and one of the three trustees is Richard James Roderick, who farms next to Gilestone.

By ‘greenwashing’ I mean that SUFT ‘saves the planet’ by planting trees in order for companies to offset their perceived ‘carbon footprint’, which allows them to go on putting out carbon. Its major partner seems to be Utility Warehouse.

Nonsense predicated on there being a ‘climate emergency’ (there isn’t); carbon being damaging to the environment (it’s not); and replacing agricultural land with sterile, monoculture pine forests making sense (it doesn’t).

Even so, Stump up for Trees seems to be well-regarded in Corruption Bay among the connoisseurs, practitioners and dispensers of flim-flam, bullshit, propaganda and other means of deceiving poor old Dai Public.

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ABATTOIR SECTOR GROUP

This is yet another organisation based in Bristol and set up as recently as 2020. Though it’s not registered as either a company or a charity because it’s an offshoot of the Sustainable Food Trust.

The ABS is dedicated to keeping smaller, rural abattoirs open, and what carnivore (bares fangs!) could argue with that?

Parent body, the Sustainable Food Trust, is an international organisation with a wider remit to support ‘sustainable farming’. By which I assume that it seeks to avoid the wrath of the swivel-eyed with a modified kind of farming that’s less damaging to Mother Earth.

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It is, as I say, based in Bristol, and I see no mention of Wales on the website. The only Welsh connection I can find is founder Patrick Holden, an organic dairy farmer from the Lampeter area.

Holder is a founder of Sustainable Food Trust and current CEO. He was a former director of the Soil Association.

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OUR FOOD

You may need to pay attention with this one. For just as with the previous section we have an organisation operating under a different label. There’s even a third label.

Let’s start with the Our Food website. Scroll down and you’ll read: A project of the Conservation Farming Trust Company Number 10823532′. Which the Companies House website confirms as the number for Conservation Farming Trust.

On the Our Food website we also read: ‘This website was built with support from Monmouthshire County Council, the Brecon Beacons National Park, and the Welsh Government. It is part of a process to build a new campaign in the region to secure 1200 acres for regenerative horticulture for local markets.’

The Our Food 1200 website confirms that the figure refers to the acreage the new organisation hopes to be given. At the time of writing 24 acres had been donated. Though, in fairness, Our Food 1200 was only launched in January. It’s registered as a Community Benefit Company.

Let’s go back to the parent organisation, Conservation Farming Trust. The registered office address is in London, and the three directors live in Ireland (1) and England (2). So no Welsh connections there.

And yet, it seems the only funding Our Food gets is from Welsh sources.

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This funding is presumably justified because Our Food 1200 is looking for Welsh land to be donated. This looks very much like One Planet Developments rebranded. (I’m sure I read a reference to ‘OPD’ on the website.)

As with OPDs, those we’ll find on these over-sized allotments are unlikely to be local. So why are we funding it?

And is it a safe bet? I ask because a driving force behind it all seems to be Duncan Mark Fisher, who serves as both secretary and a member of Our Food 1200. Companies House suggests Fisher’s business record is ‘patchy’, to say the least.

The Conservation Farming Trust may have no connection with Wales, but Our Land, and certainly Our Land 1200, are trying to put down roots. Maybe they’re hoping someone will buy them a farm!

More planet-savers promoting climate hysteria, with the ‘Welsh Government’ and others happy to go along with this exploitative, colonialist nonsense.

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LANDWORKERS’ ALLIANCE

What you’ve read thus far has been unadulterated, unsubstantiated and unconvincing bullshit (however sincere some of those promoting it), but this final section outdoes it all. For we are now with the horny-handed sons of toil, straight out of The Grapes of Wrath.

Or those who would imagine themselves so to be.

For I now direct your attention to the Landworkers’ Alliance. Scroll down and you’ll see that this crew aligns itself with the International Peasants Movement. (I’m afraid I let my membership lapse.)

When you join you get given a pitchfork and the addresses of local landlords. (Bastards!)

When Dominic and Eugenie re-imagine themselves as peasants you know you’ve gone so far down the rabbit-hole that you run the risk of being shot by an Australian farmer.

And doesn’t it count as cultural appropriation?

The Landworkers’ Alliance was formed in 2015, and has its registered address in Dorset. Here’s the Companies House entry.

The ‘accounts’ – as with all the outfits I’ve dealt with here – are vague, being little more than unaudited statements. Though I can tell you that the latest such statement (y/e 30.09.2020) gives assets at £151,507 (previous year £66,523). But with no indication of where the money came from.

It would also appear to be a Woke organisation. For which we should be thankful, because trans peasants are never far from my thoughts. (I hope it’s the same for you!)

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The directors are resident in England and Scotland with the exceptions of Katharine Anne McEvoy and Gerald Davies Miles, both residents of Pembrokeshire. The former seems to live in Newport, with the latter to be found at Caerhys Organic Community Agriculture (COCA), near St David’s.

I feel a tear well in old Jac’s eye, for we may finally have found a genuine Welsh farmer! Though whether he’ll be in Knighton is another matter.

Looking briefly at the ‘accounts’ for COCA, or rather, the ‘statement of financial position’, we see a paltry £3,154 for y/e 31.03.2022.

I suspect that COCA is a virtue-signalling side-line, with Caerhys farm itself run as a commercial – if organic – agricultural business, including bed & breakfast.

But the irony.

We have sought for centuries to escape being peasants, in our own country; now we face an invasion of land-hungry Green-Left-Woke carrot-growing poseurs wanting to play at being peasants . . . in our country.

◊

CONCLUSION

The sad truth is that farmers have been badly treated under devolution. And it’s happened in identifiable stages.

It began in 1999 with Labour taking control of the new Assembly. A Labour Party in which too many saw farmers as landowners, and therefore capitalists. Though anyone who can lump together a struggling Welsh hill farmer and the Duke of Westminster really does have a problem.

This encouraged others to join in. I’m thinking now of the environmentalists, the planet savers. Though all too often it was their own interests, and the interests of their cronies, that were being served, not those of the planet.

Chief among them was Jane Davidson, Minister for Environment, Sustainability and Housing from 2007 to 2011. When her Labour Party was in coalition with Plaid Cymru.

Davidson, a wealthy and privately-educated Englishwoman, was determined to impose her will on us, for the benefit of others like her, no matter what the cost. To us.

Thanks to Davidson we saw TAN 6 in July 2010, the ‘Hippies’ Charter’, which allows English drop-outs to build what they like, where they like.

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In January 2014, Alun Davies, the Minister for Natural Resources and Food, announced that 15% of CAP funding would in future be transferred from Pillar One (i.e. farmers) to Pillar 2 (rural development projects).

‘Rural Development Projects’ means those self-serving ‘community’ schemes dreamed up by Jane Davidson’s friends that benefit no one else.

Wales was further blessed, just a year later, with the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. Here you see the Act’s objectives, with my comments.

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This legislation is another example of the Left window dressing a looted store (after inciting the looters with talk of ‘victimhood’ and ensuring the police didn’t get involved.)

Bullshit dreamed up to please enviroshysters and pressure groups. Which has achieved nothing for us Welsh. But it allows the ‘Welsh Government’ to say: ‘We were the first government in the world . . . ‘.

And that, for our politicians, is all that really matters.

More recently, we saw Lesley Griffiths (and Gary), introduce legislation to curb pollution of Welsh waterways. This problem is localised, and there are many culprits, including water companies.

But Lesley (and Gary) pretended to believe that the problem is national, and that farmers are solely to blame.

If you believe that traditional farming methods contribute to anthropogenic global warming, then the sensible approach would have been to sit down with farmers and work out a better way forward.

Instead, and from the outset, Labour politicians chose vilification, lies, confrontation, punishment.

An approach that becomes inconsistent, even sinister, when we think again about Knighton on the 17th. Where ‘Welsh Government’ representatives will be rubbing shoulders with lots of . . . well, farmers.

Clearly, the ‘Welsh Government’ has no problem with farmers as such, so perhaps the problem is only with Welsh farmers.

♦ end ♦

 

© Royston Jones 2022