Wales has voted for change. After 27 years of Labour‑led government, the Senedd now has a new political shape, with Plaid Cymru emerging as the largest party and seeking to form a minority government. 

It is very early in the life of the new Senedd. Predicting how debates will unfold would be speculative. But the contours of the conversation ahead are already visible – and for those working on food, farming and land use, there is a real opportunity for a positive reset. 

A change in government creates political space. What happens next will shape how Wales thinks about food both as an economic sector, and as a system that connects land and marine use, health, nature, livelihoods and resilience. 

Food strategy: more than just growth

Plaid Cymru’s manifesto is notable for its explicit commitment to developing a National Food Strategy for Wales. That commitment alone marks a shift. Its significance lies less in the label and more in what it could enable. 

Over the past decade, food policy in Wales has largely been framed through economic growth, often measured narrowly through sales and turnover at the processing end of the system. That approach has delivered some success. But it has also left important questions underexplored: resilience, equity, environmental limits, public health, and the long‑term public value of the food system. 

As Plaid Cymru begins work on its Programme for Government, there is an opportunity to ask different questions. Not simply how do we grow the sector?  but what kind of food system does Wales need – and who benefits from it? 

The manifesto’s proposal to revive a national development agency is one example. Wales has been here before. Under the former Welsh Development Agency, targeted support helped drive rapid growth in food processing and agriculture. A renewed approach could learn from that experience, while broadening the definition of success, and the metrics to measure it, beyond scale and export alone. 

Joining up farm and post‑farm policy 

One of the clearest challenges ahead sits at the boundary between farming policy and the wider food economy. 

As the Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS) was developed, the signals were not always aligned. Modelled reductions in livestock numbers, for example, sat uncomfortably alongside continued expansion in post‑farm processing and manufacturing. The risk is a food system that pulls in different directions with the unintended consequence of more reliance on imports and import substitution.

The incoming government faces a complex task: supporting change in what and how Wales produces, while managing a fair transition for farmers and rural communities that are already deeply embedded in the globalized system, whilst not offshoring Wales’s impacts overseas.

What’s important now is policy coherence. Food strategy, agricultural policy and land use planning need to be developed together, with a clear view of trade‑offs and impacts across the whole system. 

Land use, citizens and long‑term choices 

Ultimately, many of these questions come back to land. We are asking more of it than ever before: food production, climate mitigation, biodiversity recovery, housing, energy and infrastructure. 

Others have recognised this tension. In England, the launch of a Land Use Framework makes the trade‑offs clearer, together with opportunities to optimise decision making. In Wales, five years on from Future Wales 2040, there is a strong case for a review that reflects today’s realities. 

How those choices are made matters as much as the technical analysis. FFCC’s work, through processes such as the Food Conversation and land use framework pilots, shows the value of bringing citizens - including farmers, progressive businesses, young people with a real stake in a more resilient future - into these discussions early.

Done well, this leads to decisions that are more considered, less rigid, and with better outcomes that improve people’s everyday lives. 

A wider food system – including the sea 

One welcome feature of recent manifestoes was the renewed attention given to fisheries and aquaculture, including explicit recognition of their place in the food system. 

Wales has significant untapped potential here. Sustainable aquaculture, in particular, offers opportunities for food production, coastal livelihoods and ecosystem recovery – if developed with care and ambition. Food strategy needs to reflect the full system: land and sea, rural and coastal and our place in supporting long term food resilience.

What needs to change now 

The people of Wales have voted for change. The question facing the new Senedd is now how it is delivered. On top of Wales’s well-rehearsed and intractable social and economic issues, now food inflation rising sharply since 2021 and ongoing global instability putting further pressure on household budgets, the cost of inaction is high. 

This government could put down a radical marker and engage early and openly with those who can help deliver change – farmers, food businesses, communities, citizens and practitioners – and resist the pull of narrow or siloed solutions. 

Moments like this do not come often. Used well, they can set a direction that transforms the outlook for Wales.