The Green, Green Glas of Home

The National Assembly's Public Accounts Committee have said that while the Glastir
scheme is well-intentioned, there are problems with how it's been managed.
(Pic : Nanhoron Estate)

I don't normally cover farming issues, mainly because such posts often go unread and I don't know anything about farming in the first place.

Regardless, the issue of land management is an important one. Farmers are responsible for a huge portion of Wales' countryside, and how they use and maintain that land impacts food supply chains, flood prevention and protection of wildlife habitats.

Last week, the National Assembly's Public Accounts Committee published their succinct inquiry report into the Glastir scheme (pdf). They made 8 recommendations, which broadly recommended that :

• Glastir should provide genuine environmental improvements, not reinforce existing practice.
• The Welsh Government should identify water quality issues on Natural Resources Wales land, and also reconsider how they monitor poor farming practice which impacts water quality.
• The Welsh Government should evaluate the online application process for Glastir and make necessary changes if this process is deemed to be a barrier to participation. They should also review data-sharing between farm inspectorates to minimise disruption to farmers.
• The Welsh Government should report back to the Committee by autumn 2015 on its "ambitious targets" for uptake of the Glastir scheme.

Glastir : An Overview

Glastir replaced four other agri-environment schemes in 2012.
(Pic : woodlands.co.uk)

Glastir launched in 2012 as a replacement for four other land management grant schemes (Tir Mynydd, Tir Gofal, Tir Cynnal and the Organic Farming Scheme). The Welsh Government funds 45% of the scheme's cost as part of its Rural Development Plan 2014-20, while much of the rest comes from the EU's Agricultural Fund. As far as I can tell, Glastir's budget over the period is around £80-90million.

Glastir currently has six elements :

• Glastir Entry – Farmers commit to making environmental improvements for 5 years.
• Glastir Advanced – Targeted at specific geographical areas which will definitely yield good outcomes.
• Glastir Commons – Aimed at common land grazers, offering short-term contracts.
• Glastir Efficiency Grants – Aimed at reducing carbon footprints and improving business efficiency.
• Glastir Woodland – Supports farmers and land managers to create new woodland.
• Glastir Organic – Five-year contracts to support organic farmers.

Grants are awarded based on a points system. For Glastir Entry, farmers enter their farm details into the online system, as well as how many hectares (1 hectare = 10,000 m² ) they want to use for Glastir. They're awarded points based on the projects they choose - ie. plant woodland, maintain hedges, create a bird pond. Different projects carry different points. Once they reach a minimum number of points (34 points per hectare) they're eligible for a grant.

A Wales Audit Office report from September 2014 (pdf) was critical of some aspects of Glastir, saying that although the scheme is aligned with environment targets and administration has improved, take-up has been poor (probably as a result of unrealistic Welsh Government sign-up targets). Under Glastir Advanced, for example, 20% of farms approached by the Welsh Government declined to take part in certain activities.

The Committee said that while the thinking behind Glastir is "laudable", they were worried whether Glastir was actually going to produce the results needed to meet Welsh Government objectives.

Administrative Hiccups

Glastir will eventually be managed online-only, but poor broadband
connections and deadline issues have put farmers off applying.
(Pic : Farmers Weekly)

Glastir is moving to online-only applications by 2016-17. This is a problem by itself because of poor broadband connectivity in rural Wales. The Welsh Government offers telephone and face-to-face support to mitigate this.

The National Farmers Union (NFU) raised concerns about the timescales and deadlines for applying, but the Welsh Government said (effectively) that farmers often leave their homework to the last minute, regardless of scheme. However, Gareth Jones, the Director General of Natural Resources in the Welsh Government, conceded that the application process can be complex.

The Committee had a number of concerns about how the Welsh Government assess the scheme's value for money as they don't have clear administration costs. At the moment the six elements are run by a single multi-skilled team, so it's difficult to determine how much each element of Glastir costs to run.

Another bugbear from farmers were the number of inspections. Natural Resources Wales, the Welsh Government and animal health officials all have separate inspection regimes, meaning a farmer could receive a visit from a veterinary inspector one day, then the next day be visited by a Welsh Government official. The average Glastir inspection can take up four days of a farmer's time.

The Director General said EU rules are often very strict as they look to reduce funding wherever they can, so the vigorous inspection regimes mean Wales has lost very little EU money as a result. However, he accepted more could be done to align inspection regimes and share data.

Participation Rates & Monitoring

The Welsh Government set clear targets for the sign-ups to Glastir. The big problem is they're missing every target (except woodland creation) by up to 50%. The NFU described the target-setting as "woeful", suggesting that the complicated application process and administrative burden on farmers was resulting in low take-up.

The Audit Office recommended setting more realistic targets from a stronger evidence base, which the Welsh Government accepts. The Director General also believes rising commodity prices since 2008-09 meant there wasn't the incentive there for farmers to participate any more.

On monitoring Glastir's success, the Auditor General said an evaluation programme was in place, but few criteria have been developed by the Welsh Government to determine if Glastir is working or not. The Welsh Government accepted this criticism, but argued that the scientific evidence base needed in order to determine if Glastir schemes were having a positive impact was still "poorly established".

Addressing Poor Water Quality

One of the main aims of Glastir is to improve water quality by stemming poor farming practices.
However, farmers have pointed to the Welsh Government needing to get their own house in order.
(Pic : Environment agency via BBC Wales)

This was a specific concern raised in the Wales Audit Office report, due to poor farming practices which have harmed overall water quality.

The Director General didn't believe targeting Glastir support on this would provide value for money, and Glastir was already improving water quality through funding things like run-off storage ponds.

The NFU pointed the finger towards land managed by Natural Resources Wales (which is effectively Welsh Government land), as 9.5% of breaches of water quality standards have come from forestry compared to 15% from agriculture. The Committee wanted assurances from the Welsh Government that they were working with Natural Resources Wales to ensure they maintain water standards on their own land. They also agreed – concurred by the RSPB – that a wider range of interventions be used on farmers breaching water quality standards (as some poor farming practices are perfectly legal), up to and including withdrawal of public funds.

The road to Hell is....

Like many Welsh Government schemes (not just farming), the intentions are good, the application of policy has flaws and then the outcomes wobble.

Ministers and the civil service need to start doing their best to get things right the first time, because that's one of the main reasons why devolved services have a poor reputation. It makes the case for a beefed-up civil service academy to train future civil servants all the stronger. Also, the whole process behind this seems rushed which, in fairness, could be beyond the control of Cathays Park and down to the speed by which the EU works and the time the EU give national governments to make changes.

I can't tell if the following is true or not, but judging by some of the projects being pushed by Glastir, there's a chance farmers are being paid for work they were already doing - like maintaining hedges and insulating farm buildings. So you could say Glastir is as much about compensating for changes to the Common Agricultural Policy in relation to the environment (which have had an impact on direct payments) than incentivising new environmentally-friendly improvements.

The Welsh Government are fond of talking-up the need for "evidence-based policy", and it's a popular way for Labour to shout down ideas from opposition parties. It looks like they've gone full speed into Glastir without coming up with ways to determine if the scheme actually works. That could be because the changes had to be brought in quickly, or it could be laziness or impatience on the part of ministers and civil servants.

The principle behind Glastir sounds simple and welcome enough, but the process seems onerously bureaucratic, so it's little wonder farmers are sometimes reluctant to participate.