# Agrifood policy after Brexit: The growing role of agroecology in Wales

Bernd Bonfert

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## To cite this version:

Bernd Bonfert. Agrifood policy after Brexit: The growing role of agroecology in Wales. Journal of Rural Studies, 2025, 114 (103559), 10.1016/j.jrurstud.2024.103559. hal-05395029

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# Agrifood policy after Brexit: The growing role of agroecology in Wales

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Bernd Bonfert

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Department of Economies, Territories and Sustainable Development, EM Normandie Business School, 20 Quai Frissard, 76600, Le Havre, France

## ARTICLE INFO

**Keywords:**

Agr生态学

Agrifood policy

Agriculture subsidies

Advocacy

Policy reform

Wales

## ABSTRACT

The UK's exit from the Common Agricultural Policy has created an opportunity for significant agrifood policy change. In Wales, plans to implement a 'Community Food Strategy' promise to lend more support to domestic, community-based, and ecologically sustainable food provision, echoing policy demands made by agroecological organisations. However, The Welsh agrifood system's specialisation around meat production and trade stand in direct opposition to these ambitions.

This paper analyses the Welsh government's reforms in light of these tensions to explain what achievements and challenges a small, trade-dependent nation faces when attempting to change its agrifood system. It examines policy claims and advocacy activities by agroecological organisations, assesses to what extent the government addresses those claims, and discusses the overall trajectory of Welsh agrifood policy. The paper draws on 'Foundational Economy' scholarship to conceptualise agroecology as a socio-ecological innovation capable of informing large-scale sustainability transitions through active citizenship and policy change. Empirical data is drawn from qualitative analyses of policy documents and interviews with agroecological organisations.

The paper finds that agroecological organisations provide the Welsh Government with arguments, data, and best practices, but struggle to see their more ambitious claims implemented. Thus, while the new policies offer improvements for environmental recovery and horticultural production, they remain limited in scope and unlikely to facilitate a holistic agrifood system transformation. Yet, the government has opportunities to strengthen its policies by introducing stricter transition targets. The paper concludes by discussing general implications for agrifood system change and the strategic challenges of an agroecological transformation.

## 1. Introduction

The stability of our global food system has been recently disrupted by multiple intersecting crises, from the Covid-19 pandemic, to the growing costs of living, the war in Ukraine, and the consequences of climate emergency. Against this backdrop, demand for a more resilient, socially just and ecologically sustainable food system is increasing across Europe (Eurobarometer, 2022). Growing attention is paid to the concept of agroecology, which integrates ecological food production and grassroots participation (FAO, 2019) and various agroecological practices are gaining traction, such as community-supported agriculture (CSA), in which producers and consumers share the cost and outputs of farming (CSA Network, 2021a).

While the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) upholds a subsidy regime in favour of large-scale industrialised agriculture that does not incentivise agroecology (Alons, 2017), the UK's recent exit from the EU and CAP has presented a unique opportunity to pursue an alternative path. The nation of Wales represents an especially ambitious departure,

as its government is planning to implement a new 'Community Food Strategy' (CFS) and shift towards 'Sustainable Land Management' in favour of more domestic, community-based and ecologically sustainable food provision (Welsh Government, 2022a), thus integrating agroecological principles into its agrifood policy.

This shift is especially noteworthy as Wales is lacking in land fit for growing horticulture. Despite having the highest share of land used for agriculture in the UK (over 90%, compared to 67% in England and 69% in Scotland), most of it is deemed 'less favourable' for growing food and thus used for livestock (Welsh Government, 2023). In 2020, only 204 commercial farms in Wales produced fruit and vegetables, providing around 19.5k tons of food in total, which accounts for less than 5% of the population's 5-a-day requirement (Wheeler, 2020b). Welsh farming is also highly economically concentrated, as the largest 6% of farms generate over 50% of the sector's annual turnover, while more than half of all Welsh farms are small (under 20Ha) and generate only 5.6% of turnover (Welsh Government, 2019, p. 22). These conditions make Wales highly dependent on imports to meet people's nutritional needs,

<footnote>E-mail address: bbonfert@em-normandie.fr.</footnote>
while healthy food is significantly less affordable and accessible than unhealthy options, leading to high rates of obesity among low-income households (Bellamy and Marsden, 2020; Food Foundation, 2022). Wales also suffers from significant levels of food poverty, especially since the Covid pandemic. The distribution of emergency food parcels has increased tenfold over the past decade (Bellamy and Marsden, 2020) and the rate of food insecure households (across the UK) has climbed from 7.6% to over 9% during the pandemic (Food Foundation, 2021).

Much of the momentum for policy reform has thus come from alternative food networks and agroecological farmer organisations, such as the ‘Landworkers Alliance’, ‘Social Farms and Gardens’, and the ‘CSA Network’ (CSA Network, 2021c; Landworkers Alliance and Country Trust, 2022; Social Farms & Gardens, 2022b), which aim to link environmental sustainability to goals of social equality and democratic control over the food system.

These developments in Welsh agrifood policy present an intriguing case study for multiple reasons. They allow us to investigate the distinct policy opportunities and challenges a small, trade-dependent country faces when attempting to diverge from the EU's and UK's dominant agrifood policy. They also enable us to characterise the policy claims made by agroecological organisations and illuminate how they can inform policy change. Conversely, we can interrogate what extent the government's reforms satisfy those claims, thereby critically assessing the trajectory of Welsh agrifood reforms and discussing possible alternatives. These insights carry significant implications for agrifood policy change in Europe by revealing key opportunities and challenges for transitioning towards more sustainable and community-based food provision.

To provide these insights, this article contrasts the Welsh Government's policy initiatives around the CFS with policy claims made by agroecological organisations. Drawing on 'Foundational Economy' scholarship, it conceptualises agroecology as a form of social innovation that can be upscaled to facilitate larger-scale changes to the food system. Empirically, it is based on qualitative research using document analyses, semi-structured interviews, and participatory observation with Welsh agroecological organisations.

The following section introduces the Foundational Economy framework and concept of agroecology, followed by a section on research methods. Section 4 then presents the findings on the agroecology movement's grievances, aims, and policy recommendations, as well as the Welsh Government's previous agrifood policies and current reform plans. Section 5 discusses the new reform's achievements and shortcomings in meeting the movement's claims and discusses policy implications. A final section summarises the main arguments and draws conclusions about what lessons can be learned from the Welsh context.

## 2. Conceptualisation

### 2.1. *The foundational economy*

A Foundational Economy (FE) framework offers a way to conceptualise both the dominant market-based agrifood system and social innovations aiming to transform it. The FE encompasses all economic spheres essential for human and societal reproduction. It includes a 'material' sector that provides daily consumable necessities and resources, such as food, utilities and transport, as well as a 'provisional' sector that offers universal services and transfers for collective welfare (Foundational Economy Collective, 2018). The composition and characteristics of each sector are historically and geographically contingent upon economic developments and socio-political struggles. The agrifood system is embedded in the FE, as it involves the production and provision of food as an essential commodity, as a service in and through public institutions and welfare programmes, and as a culturally specific and conspicuous good.

An FE framework examines the economic conditions and governance systems characterizing these essential reliance systems, thereby

exposing their entrenched inequalities and insufficiencies. This entails problematizing how neoliberal processes of capital concentration, financialisation and trade liberalisation affect the accessibility of foundational resources and the labour conditions and ecological footprint of generating those resources (Bentham et al., 2013). The adverse effects of such processes are highly evident in the agri-food system (Mostaccio, 2020). FE scholarship also problematises the erosion of the FE as a 'civic infrastructure' in favour of a marketisation of social life through privatisations or the outsourcing of welfare services to private interests (Barbera et al., 2018; Plank, 2020). The latter processes are less characteristic of the food system, as agrifood corporations are already predominantly in private hands while receiving substantial state subsidies (Bentham et al., 2013). However, the rapid increase in food poverty in the wake of the food price spike and austerity after 2008 (Bellamy and Marsden, 2020) demonstrates that a deterioration of other providential services also has detrimental effects on people's food security.

Besides offering such a critical account, an FE framework also examines to what extent social innovations with alternative models of business and governance can provide possibilities for a transformation towards a more democratic, socially equitable and ecologically sustainable economy. This includes studying initiatives that reject market exchange and profit maximisation in favour of creating social value and satisfying people's essential needs. It also involves revealing tensions between people's needs for 'liveability' (as consumers, workers, residents and suppliers) and their intergenerational need for ecological sustainability within planetary boundaries (Calafati et al., 2021). While it does not favour any particular form of economic ownership, an FE framework can thus be used to examine radical social innovations that seek to remove economic control from the market and non-accountable institutions and place it in the hands of civil society (Bentham et al., 2013; Foundational Economy Collective, 2018).

To investigate the range of innovative practices, an FE framework can apply the concept of 'active citizenship', which captures dynamics of community participation, collective ownership, and democratic governance within essential reliance systems. The concept highlights the importance of social and political agency in driving economic transformations while also emphasizing people's engagement in mutual solidarity and collective political struggle (Barbera and Jones, 2020). Active citizenship is therefore closely related to the notion of prefiguration (Epstein, 1991). Yet, it explicitly also includes practices of institutional advocacy aimed at driving policy change, which is considered a major factor in transforming the FE (Barbera et al., 2018). As such, an FE framework examines strategies for systemic transformation through a dual lens, focusing both on radical social innovations themselves and on the ability of the policy processes to support and consolidate them.

### 2.2. *Agroecology*

The concept of agroecology characterises the holistic integration between environmentally sustainable agricultural practices and principles of a socially equitable, democratic, and participatory food system. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) recognises agroecology as an alternative food system approach that 'seeks to optimise the interactions between plants, animals, humans and the environment while also addressing the need for socially equitable food systems' (FAO, 2022), thus contributing to several Sustainable Development Goals. It cites ten interconnected principles that characterise agroecology: agricultural diversity, co-creation and knowledge sharing through community participation, natural synergies between plants and livestock, resource efficiency to minimise external inputs, recycling, resilience against environmental and economic shocks, human and social value creation, local culture and food traditions, responsible governance that is transparent and inclusive, and a circular and solidarity economy that connects producers and consumers and provides innovative solutions for building inclusive and sustainable development (FFCC, 2019, p. 44).

Realising these principles is considered a highly ambitious
undertaking that requires changing social power relations rather than
individual regulatory fixes (Anderson et al., 2021). Thus, agroecology
has also been defined as the ‘on the ground articulation of food sover-
eignty’ (Anderson et al., 2019, p. 531), which is used by social move-
ments to claim democratic control over land and the means to produce
healthy and sustainable food independent of market pressures (Patel,
2009). Producers and communities thus apply agroecological principles
to develop an alternative food system that ‘mimics nature, stresses the
importance of local knowledge and participatory processes and priori-
tises the agency and voice of food producers over corporations and other
elite actors’ (Anderson et al., 2021, p. 2).

Agroecology can be considered an FE approach to food system transformation, as it incorporates both of the latter’s strategic dimensions: First, the concept can encompass various forms of active citizenship, from food ‘prosumerism’ to cooperative farm ownership, community organising, and participatory democratic initiatives such as food councils, all of which aim towards expanding a democratic, community-based, equitable, and ecological alternative to the dominant food system. An often cited best practice example for agroecological food provision is the practice of community-supported agriculture (CSA) (Hitchman, 2019). In CSA, consumers and producers collectively cover the costs and outputs of farming, thereby collectivizing and decommodifying the production and distribution of food through more ecologically sustainable short supply chains (Forssell and Lankoski, 2014). Many CSAs also engage in community outreach and education, such as by inviting school classes or hosting information events on agroecology, to achieve an additional social and cultural impact (Hinrichs, 2000). Second, agroecological farmers (including CSAs) have founded large national networks to engage in social and political organisation at scale. Besides sharing knowledge and developing interconnected supply chains, this enables them to organise political campaigns and engage in policy advocacy (Nicol, 2020).

2.2.1. Barriers to agroecological transformation

The extent to which agroecology and CSA can deliver on their
transformative ambitions is contested and constrained by various con-
ditions. Agroecology is generally praised for incorporating themes of
agriculture, the environment and human health in a way that promotes
ecological integrity, food sovereignty and human livelihoods (Altieri
and Nicholls, 2020). It is supported by research that highlights the
relative benefits of local and regional farming systems that are relatively
self-reliant, can reconnect crop and livestock farming, and enable a more
healthy diet based on lower animal product consumption (Billen et al.,
2018). Agroecologically farmed land also shows greater resilience to
extreme climate fluctuations (Rosset et al., 2011). CSA in particular has
been shown to help financially safeguard small food producers against
market competition (Flora and Bregendahl, 2012), improve people's
diet and nutritional skills (Allen et al., 2016), and contribute to shifting
people's perception of the food system (Hayden and Buck, 2012).

On the other hand, agroecological farms are not immune to market
pressures and often face financial difficulties (Lampkin et al., 2020).
They can experience varying degrees of market dependency and
commodification if they source some of their inputs from commercial
producers or sell their products to consumers, both of which incentivises
them to cut costs (Wach, 2021). Market competition, including with
organic producers, pressures agroecological farmers to promote their
goods and the added value of their practices in easily understandable
ways. At scale, the agroecological movement is thus incentivised to call
for new product labels and standards that can distinguish agroecological
practices, while being easily audited (Lampkin et al., 2020). The flipside
of this is that agroecological principles can become ‘technified’ by being
condensed into simplistic indicators, thus risking to become a tool under
the umbrella of climate-smart agriculture (Ajates Gonzalez et al., 2018).

Another difficulty stems from the widespread perception that agro-
ecology is necessarily rooted in local, small-scale peasant farming,
which raises questions about its scalability and capacity for feeding large

populations (Ajates Gonzalez et al., 2018). These questions also reflect
the potential tension between ecological sustainability and social live-
ability (especially regarding affordability) highlighted by the FE
(Calafati et al., 2021). However, the perception that agroecology needs
to be small-scale has been increasingly contested, as small farms can be
no less market-dependent in their inputs and outputs, and produce
proportionally high levels of emissions, even if they can avoid exploit-
ative labour relations (Wach, 2021). Conversely, although small CSA
schemes tend to avoid issues of market dependency, they have been
shown to suffer from limited accessibility, as they primarily attract
white, well-educated middle-class participants with the necessary
financial security, free time, and nutritional skills to participate (Farmer
et al., 2014). Many CSAs also lack the resources to invest in upscaling or
hiring workers without having to rely on voluntary labour (Mert-Cakal
and Miele, 2020). In turn, larger farms may be better placed to adopt
certain agroecological practices, as they can more easily mobilise the
necessary specialist skills and resources (Wach, 2021). Similarly, more
diverse food partnerships between agroecological and other organisa-
tions can potentially involve more people in active citizenship practices
and tackle systemic issues such as food poverty at a larger scale (M.
Jones and Hills, 2021), thus integrating ecological sustainability and
social liveability.

Agroecology's potential to facilitate an FE transformation of the food system ultimately lies not only in the benefits of short food supply chains themselves, but also in their ability to replace conventional, resource-intensive, polluting, and exploitative agriculture (Lampkin et al., 2020). Consequently, powerful agrifood actors can undermine an FE transformation by reproducing industrialised production and distribution practices and creating systemic lock-ins (Frison and Clément, 2020). Where such actors accept a gradual shift towards more sustainable practices, they often advocate for state-subsidised technological fixes (such as carbon storage), whose impacts are uncertain and which do not reduce carbon leakage from international trade or improve the social dimension of the food system (Tilzey, 2024).

Addressing these barriers can enable agroecology to play a more
decisive role in the food system, thereby driving a transformation
beyond productivist and market-oriented practices towards an FE of
food.

2.2.2. Agroecology and policymaking

An agroecological transformation of the food system necessitates
changing institutional policy in a way that accounts for the strategic
practices and needs of the FE. Therefore, inscribing agroecological
principles into policy requires a) accounting for agroecology's multidici-
mensional nature, b) addressing the power relations and path de-
pendencies of the dominant agrifood system and c) embedding policy
change in active citizenship.

First, as agroecology encompasses environmental, economic, and
sociopolitical dimensions of food provision, agroecological policies need
to integrate those dimensions as well. An integrated approach would
thus not only focus on agricultural practices, but also account for their
interconnection with dimensions such as territorial development, food
consumption, social inclusion, knowledge production and innovation, as
well as community engagement. This further requires targeting not only
producers, but upstream actors such as providers of seeds and fertilisers,
and downstream actors such as processors, retailers and consumers.
Policy instruments thus need to carefully define their relevant scale,
from individual farms, to supply chains, to whole territories (Lamine
et al., 2021).

Second, policy instruments need to scale back unsustainable pro-
duction practices and resource use, reduce the market dependency of
food system actors, and offer more democratic and equitable control
over food production and distribution, which implicitly challenges the
status quo of the dominant agrifood system (Tilzey, 2024). Policy in-
struments therefore need to be designed to either support agroecological
practices directly, support agroecological and other organic practices
collectively, or regulate non-sustainable practices (Lampkin et al., 2020).

Finally, as agroecology is rooted in active citizenship, developing agroecological policy instruments needs to involve democratic participation itself (Anderson et al., 2021), such as by gathering input from stakeholders affected by the policies, including producers, processors, retailers, and consumers (Lamine et al., 2021). In turn, policies can foster active citizenship practices beyond food production, such as knowledge transfer, which also benefits from the above-mentioned multidimensional perspective on agroecology (Nicol, 2020). Rooting agroecological policies in active citizenship can ultimately also help address risks of institutional path dependencies, co-optation, and greenwashing (Giraldo and Rosset, 2018).

### 3. Methods

This article is based on a qualitative investigation of both agrifood policy and agroecological policy claims in Wales. It focuses primarily on agroecological networks and organisations involved in the promotion of sustainable food production and short supply chains. This includes the Community Supported Agriculture Network (CSA Network, 2022), which connects and promotes CSA initiatives, the famers union Landworkers Alliance (Landworkers Alliance, 2022), which represents agroecological producers and farm workers, Social Farms and Gardens (SF&G) which connects community growers and is especially active in CSA networking in Wales (Little and Giles, 2020), as well as Sustain and Food Sense Wales which advocate for sustainable food policy change and run several food partnerships in Wales (Food Sense Wales, 2022b; Sustain, 2021).

The investigation combines qualitative document analyses (Westle and Krumm, 2009), semi-structured expert interviews (Kvale and Brinkmann, 2009) and participant observation (Emerson, 1995). 82 documents authored by the selected organisations were analysed using qualitative open coding in NVivo, including online posts, publications, handbooks, reports, interviews, and studies. Coding revealed their conceptions of, and experiences with, the dominant agrifood system in Wales, as well as their articulation of grievances, transformative objectives, policy claims, achievements and encountered challenges. Additionally, 67 documents outlining Welsh and UK food policy and official agricultural system statistics were consulted to capture the volume and governance of the Welsh agrifood system. Welsh policy documents related to the CFS were analysed through the framework described in section 2.2 by a) identifying the (combination of) proposed policy instruments and funding schemes, b) determining whether these instruments connected food policy with other areas, c) determining what types of stakeholders were targeted by the instruments, and d) characterising how different stakeholders were involved in the policy-making process.

Informed by the document analysis, 5 semi-structured expert interviews were conducted with leading representatives of the selected organisations and 3 additional interviews with agroecological farmers involved at grassroots level (Table 1). Respondents were selected to represent the policy assessments and claims of agroecological farming in Wales rather than provide a more general picture of farming interests

<table><caption>**Table 1**
Interview respondents.</caption><thead><tr><td>#</td><td>Organisation</td><td>Function/Body</td><td>Date</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>R1</td><td>CSA Network</td><td>Former board member</td><td>May 05, 2021</td></tr><tr><td>R2</td><td>Cae Tan</td><td>Farmer</td><td>May 18, 2021</td></tr><tr><td>R3</td><td>Sustain</td><td>Advisor</td><td>June 03, 2021</td></tr><tr><td>R4</td><td>Landworkers Alliance Wales</td><td>Policy Coordinator</td><td>June 11, 2021</td></tr><tr><td>R5</td><td>CSA Network</td><td>Coordination Team</td><td>June 24, 2021</td></tr><tr><td>R6</td><td>Coed Organic</td><td>Farmer</td><td>February 25, 2022</td></tr><tr><td>R7</td><td>Orchard Acre Market Garden</td><td>Farmer</td><td>March 03, 2022</td></tr><tr><td>R8</td><td>Social Farms and Gardens</td><td>Coordinator</td><td>July 13, 2022</td></tr></tbody></table>

and policy actors. This selection also accounted for the absence of agroecological farming from official policy documents. While this limits the generalisability of findings, it allowed for a more in-depth focused investigation.

Interviews took place between May 2021 and Jul 2022 and lasted around an hour on average. Respondents were asked to introduce and describe their own agroecological organisation, including its short- and long-term political aims and current role within the Welsh food system. They were also asked to describe the significance of policy advocacy within their organisation, illustrate how such advocacy was conducted, and explain which policy changes their organisation was calling for. Finally, respondents were asked to assess the prospective policy changes outlined in the CFS, and share how they envisioned a future Welsh food system. Interviews were recorded and transcribed, followed by a qualitative open coding analysis mirroring the document analysis.

Finally, participant observation was conducted by attending 8 online events and one in-person gathering hosted by the selected organisations between May 2021 and January 2022. During these encounters, field notes were produced that captured both the content of discussions (especially policy claims and future visions) and observations concerning the organisations' internal practices and mutual engagement.

### 4. Findings

#### 4.1. The Welsh agroecology movement and its policy claims

Wales (and the UK) experienced the growth of an increasingly active and vocal agroecology movement, whose practices have greatly expanded in recent years. During the pandemic, consumers and producers relied increasingly on alternative food provision schemes to adapt to food supply chain disruptions, particularly through food box schemes and CSA (Wheeler, 2020a). The UK-wide CSA network thus grew from 89 local farms in March 2020 to over 150 a year later (CSA Network, 2021a) and currently counts around 200 farms (R4). CSAs still only account for approximately 0.1 percent of UK agricultural enterprises, employment, and financial turnover, yet their rapid expansion indicates a growing demand for alternatives to conventional retail (CSA Network, 2021a; DEFRA, 2020). Commercial veg box schemes expanded even quicker (Wheeler, 2020a).

At the same time, healthy food consumption increased only among a small minority of households, signifying an intensification of food inequalities (The Food Foundation, 2023). Some agroecological initiatives focused on this issue, such as Food Cardiff,<fnref n="1" /> a local food partnership between 95 organisations, which won a £150k grant to tackle food poverty (Food Sense Wales, 2022b) or the UK-wide 'Peas Please' campaign, which attracted 8 national and 49 local partners who pledged to enhance their provision of fresh fruit and vegetables (The Food Foundation, 2023).

With the UK's exit from the CAP, agroecological organisations have gained a major opportunity to advocate for radical changes in agrifood policy to help them overcome their niche position. Thus, many agroecological organisations in Wales started participating in public consultations and developing sophisticated policy recommendations to support community-based and sustainable food provision. While they often used CSA as a best-practice example, the scope of their proposals reached much further to include wider claims of sustainable food provision and community participation. These proposals and claims can be grouped into four distinct themes:

##### 4.1.1. Subsidies for small ecological agriculture and targets for food provision

The most widely voiced grievance of Welsh agroecological

<footnote n="1">¹ Food Cardiff is a member of the Sustainable Food Places network, which has 7 food partnerships in Wales.</footnote>
organisations concern the lack of access to agricultural subsidies. Under the CAP, direct subsidies are calculated based on farm size, thus overwhelmingly benefitting large-scale industrial producers, while a minimum size requirement of 5Ha excludes most small-scale ecological farms. This effectively condemns niche actor to their niche status:

> ‘As a small-scale producer, we receive no subsidies. I’m selling vegetables, my vegetables are considered expensive at the farmers market because people compare to what’s in the supermarket. But what’s in the supermarket, even if it’s organic, would have been grown on a large-scale farm that would receive some kind of subsidies.’ (R6)

Agroecological organisations thus called for abolishing the size requirement and introducing micro-grants for small-scale farming. This claim was often combined with a demand to recognise non-certified whole farm systems:

> ‘In terms of transition we’re asking for two key things: a removal of the 5Ha limit for subsidies and recognition of whole farm systems without organic certification. Half of our farms aren’t registered organic but are farming to organic or higher standards and are doing massively important stuff for biodiversity, but they’re not going to get any recognition under the current way the transition is being rolled out.’ (R5)

To demonstrate the practical efficacy of this demand, Food Sense Wales, SF&G, and other organisations ran a ‘Small Edible Horticulture Project’ from 2021 to 2022 to provide micro-grants to small producers in Wales, including several CSAs, enabling them to acquire farming equipment and build infrastructure. The project’s concluding report highlighted the economic, ecological and nutritional benefits of these grants, and called on the government to introduce a new subsidy scheme of £5-10k per grant (Wheeler, 2022). This recommendation echoed previous calls for smaller start-up schemes made by the CSA network, Sustain and the Landworkers Alliance (CSA Network, 2021b; Landworkers Alliance, 2018).

To facilitate a long-term transition, many agroecological organisations encouraged the government to introduce binding targets for local sustainable food provision. The Landworkers Alliance, for instance, called for ‘national targets for local food production and distribution [which] should follow a food supply vision of 80% domestic and 20% imports, with a target for independent food businesses (including social enterprises and cooperatives) to have a 25% market share by 2030’ (Thompson et al., 2021). Similarly, Sustain asked the government to aim at increasing ‘the market share of farmer-focused supply chains and local and regional food systems to 25% by 2035’ (Sustain, 2021). The Food Policy Alliance Cymru articulated deliberately over-ambitious demands for symbolic impact, calling for a roadmap towards ‘100% agro-ecological production by 2030 on all farms [and], a Net Zero Food System by 2035’ (Food Policy Alliance Cymru, 2021).

### 4.1.2. Funding for agroecological training, education and infrastructure

Another core claim was to provide funding and institutional support for agroecological training, education and infrastructure. Existing agricultural training networks such as Farming Connect (Food Farming and Countryside Commission, 2020) focused primarily on conventional methods, without developing agroecological knowledge or skills. Filling this need was considered a high priority, not least to promote sustainable farming as a long-term viable career path (R2). Training was considered essential not only for new entrants but also to scale-up agroecological production by introducing new methods and tools and relying on more professionalised labour:

> ‘When you get to a certain scale [...] that makes the job a little bit more skilled, it involves more training or more direct skills around working with machinery and makes it a little bit less accessible to

people and volunteers just from a health and safety point of view.’ (R6)

Consequently, organisations such as the CSA Network and Landworkers Alliance offered training and act as mentors for new starters (R2). SF&G, Lantra and Tyfu Cymru also launched a special Welsh CSA Cluster Group to facilitate mutual exchange and learning among new CSAs (R8). However, due to their financial limitations, these organisations mostly conducted short-term projects and had to spend significant efforts to secure additional funding:

> ‘It’s hard for any organisation that relies on grants to just keep the money coming in, keep existing. There’s almost no one that can exist purely from their membership fees and donations. It’s almost impossible I would say.’ (R3)

Given the public service these organisations performed to facilitate an agroecological transition, they called on the government to lend greater funding to support these their training activities. Suggestions included recognising public engagement activities under the new ‘Sustainable Farming Incentive’ (CSA Network, 2021b; Landworkers Alliance et al., 2022) and supporting the creation of a network of training sites, mentors, and intergenerational exchange groups to connect agroecological farms and their training activities (Landworkers Alliance, 2018).

Some agroecological organisations extended these calls for funding to a wider range of activities and political sectors, aiming to develop a large infrastructure of agroecological initiatives and services. The Landworkers Alliance, for instance, called for:

> ‘a national programme that provides government-level financial support for local food infrastructure and facilitates access to safe and nutritious food for at-risk populations.’ (Thompson et al., 2021)

This also included expanding existing funding into local food partnerships and other support schemes (Food Sense Wales, 2022a), which would also provide ‘more affordable business and marketing advice and data gathering’ (Sustain, 2021) to agroecological producers, helping them develop their operations. Such data gathering could also help create and maintain digital databases, mapping tools and websites, including existing online infrastructures such as the Open Food Network, which were invaluable for promoting initiatives like CSAs and connecting producers and consumers via food hubs (R1). Other suggestions included calling for governmental efforts to support nutritional education among consumers, such as by promoting healthy eating at schools, to ultimately improve consumers’ health, reduce obesity and prevent food waste (Bellamy and Marsden, 2020).

### 4.1.3. Access to public procurement and land

Another claim was for public authorities to offer more procurement contracts and agricultural land to local and community-based food producers. As summarised by the Landworkers Alliance:

> ‘We would like to see more direct public procurement focusing on environmentally sustainable local production. We would like to see more things like regional processing centres, local abattoirs. [...] Regional packaging, processing, more planning changes. Planning policy that’s proactively supportive of small-scale farms and local supply chains and all the infrastructure that’s needed for that.’ (R4)

To implement a change in procurement, various organisations recommended using dynamic procurement infrastructures or vouchers to lend small and medium-sized sustainable producers easier access to government contracts (CSA Network, 2021b). Sustain suggested diverting existing food expenses towards investing into those infrastructures, as well as for local authorities to create and strengthen food partnerships, to enable Wales to reach a 33% dynamic procurement target by 2025 (Sustain and RSPB, 2021).

Regarding land access, respondents noted that large landowners
were offering part of their land to rent, but this was often unaffordable and selective, privileging professional and commercial growers over community-driven initiatives:

‘If a professional grower approaches a farmer and says “I want to make a business here and this is what I want to do and these are my methods” then a farmer can relate to that because you’re speaking their language. If as a community group you want [...] lots of people and a social scene then I can imagine there won’t be many farmers that want that on their land.’ (R6)

Sustainable land trusts therefore purchased and offered land for agroecological farming. SF&G, Lantra and Tyfu Cymru also launched the £1.2m ‘Resilient Green Spaces’ project to build 600 community allotments, five food hubs, and hundreds of orchards (Social Farms & Gardens, 2022a). Together with Gwyneth County Council the project also engaged local communities in managing their local green spaces (R8).

As these initiatives remained limited in volume, agroecological organisations called for the government to make access to land more widely accessible. The Landworkers Alliance called for public low-interest loans to help new entrants buy their rented land and to boost the activities of sustainable land trusts. It also called for significant land holdings to be registered as ‘assets of community value’, thereby preventing their sale without previous community consultations (Landworkers Alliance, 2018). To embed this type of support more long-term, the WWF suggested introducing a target of 2% of Welsh land area to be used for horticultural production, which could function as an ongoing tool for health and land management policy (Bellamy and Marsden, 2020).

### 4.1.4. Tackling social inequality in food production and consumption

A final claim made by agroecological organisations was for the government to address social inequality among food producers and consumers, thereby reflecting the social dimension of agroecology.

Since low wages are endemic in the agrifood system, agroecological organisations saw an urgent need to tackle income poverty among farm workers and food sector employees. The Food Policy Alliance Cymru formulated the demand to pay ‘all workers in the food system a wage that allows them to meet their everyday needs.’ (Food Foundation, 2022, p. 11). For consumers, healthy food remained significantly less financially accessible than junk food, especially given the high levels of poverty in Wales. As agroecological producers struggled to address this problem themselves, they called on the government to ‘ensure that price isn’t a barrier to choosing sustainable options, including for people on low incomes’ (Food Foundation, 2022, p. 15).

Some agroecological initiatives, such as Food Cardiff, aimed to tackle food poverty directly through active citizenship, by empowering people on low income to voice their grievances to policymakers, mapping food deserts, and working with public health and financial institutions to roll out food-related benefits (Food Cardiff, 2021). Other active citizenship practices, such as CSA, remained less accessible to people on low income, and thus called for subsidies specifically to enhance their accessibility (R3). The ‘Accessible Veg’ project trialled the latter by sponsoring CSA membership for several low-income households in Wales. It found that people benefitted from greater food security, healthier nutrition, and new social relations after joining, concluding that micro-grants could help CSAs lower their prices or introduce cheaper solidarity shares, thus enhancing their overall accessibility (Verfuerth and Bellamy, 2022).

To address the root causes of food insecurity, agroecological organisations agreed that a substantial agrifood system transition ultimately required ambitious and material changes beyond the food system, including by tackling income poverty. A CSA Network representative succinctly called for ‘making the income gap smaller so that people can afford to buy good food and have the resource to do so’ (R5). Other agroecological organisations suggested raising wages and benefits across society in line with the costs of living:

‘To enable everyone to eat well, incomes (both from wages and benefits) need to be set at a level that accounts for the cost of healthy, sustainable food. Currently, the assessments used when setting both minimum wage and benefits levels fail to account for this cost.’ (Food Foundation, 2022, p. 9)

In general, agroecological organisations expressed such calls for social equality in many of their other policy recommendations as well, as they tied the subject of food provision to other sectors, such as health, care and education.

## 4.2. Welsh agrifood policy and the ‘Community Food Strategy’

### 4.2.1. Previous policies supporting agroecology

Agroecology has not received major policy attention in the UK thus far. Following the referendum to leave the EU, the UK’s Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs outlined different options for a sustainable agrifood policy beyond the CAP, which did not mention agroecology and mainly focused on more climate-neutral, resource-efficient agricultural practices, thereby disregarding notions of social inclusion or democratic participation in the food system (Ajates Gonzalez et al., 2018).

The Welsh Government has not acknowledged the concept of agroecology either, but launched several policies over the years to support local and sustainable food provision, including forms of active citizenship. The ‘Community Grown Food Action Plan’ in 2010 aimed at supporting local community-based horticultural production by researching and promoting active citizenship practices, such as CSA and community allotments, mapping available funding resources, sharing knowledge, and developing a sustainable ‘land bank’ for Wales. Its concluding assessment identified hundreds of community initiatives, many of which aimed to expand their activities, and highlighted the need for more funding, training, land access, and guidance for local planners (Wales Rural Observatory, 2012). At the same time, the ‘One Planet Development’ programme encouraged the creation of self-sustaining agroecological communities and businesses (including CSAs) to act as exemplars for sustainable living with net-zero emissions in Wales. To date, 45 sites managed to pass the highly demanding approval and planning process to receive the One Planet label (One Planet Council, 2022).

In 2015, the Welsh Government introduced the ‘Wellbeing of Future Generations Act’ as a key policy framework (Welsh Government, 2015), which still informs public policymaking in Wales. It established 46 national indicators to make Wales prosperous, resilient, healthier, more equal, globally responsible, and host to cohesive communities, a vibrant culture and thriving Welsh language. Local councils and public services boards were tasked with contributing to and monitoring these indicators, including by integrating their policies. The ‘Environment Wales Act’ (Welsh Government, 2016) gave further responsibilities to public bodies to maintain and enhance the resilience of ecosystems and biodiversity, and set up legally binding targets of an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

The Government also explicitly cited the FE as a priority area and created a ‘Foundational Economy Challenge Fund’ of £4.5m to support social innovations that could enhance wellbeing in essential sectors. Of the 52 projects supported, 7 revolved around sustainable food production, distribution, procurement and disposal (Welsh Government, 2021b).

While these efforts were important steps towards facilitating more sustainable food provision, their impact on the wider agrifood system was limited, not least due to the CAP system of area-based subsidies reproducing the dominant position of large-scale livestock producers at the expense of horticulture.

### 4.2.2. The Community Food Strategy (CFS)

The departure from CAP has provided the UK with a unique opportunity to explore an alternative agrifood policy approach beyond the
EU's exceptionalist tradition (Tilzey, 2024). The Welsh Government has used this transition to incorporate more ambitious social and ecological objectives in its own agrifood policy. Its aim is to 'create a new system of farm support that will maximise the protective power of nature through farming, recognising the particular needs of family farms in Wales and acknowledging ecologically sustainable local food production' (Welsh Government, 2021c). This involves developing the CFS 'to encourage the production and supply of locally-sourced food in Wales' (Welsh Government, 2021c) and, starting in 2026, replacing direct payments with a 'Sustainable Farming Scheme' (Welsh Government, 2024b).

The Sustainable Farming Scheme aims to provide funding to farms from 3Ha, rather than 5Ha, supporting three types of actions: universal actions that all recipients of a baseline subsidy need to adhere to, optional actions they can choose to undertake, and collaborative actions involving at least two farmers (Welsh Government, 2022a).

Universal actions include, for instance, the need for conducting annual self-assessments, introducing bio-security measures, reporting on soil quality, nutrient output, and chemical use, preserving tree cover, ponds and other natural habitats, and undergoing educational courses. Optional actions cover a wide range of practices, primarily around environmental preservation and decarbonisation. Especially relevant for agroecological initiatives are support measures for starting up horticulture businesses, trialling new techniques, organising farm visits, and engaging in learning and knowledge exchange. Similarly, collaborative actions mainly aim at scaling up preservation and decarbonisation efforts, but they also offer a way to build food partnerships around direct sales. Additionally, the scheme offers training and advice via the 'Farming Connect Programme'. Regarding social inequality, the government also introduced free school meals for all students and announced £3m in funding to support food partnerships in combating the cost of living crisis (Sustain, 2022).

Initially, the strategy also included a 'Food Wales Bill', which aimed to commit public authorities to achieving 'food goals' with the aid of a new Welsh Food Commission. These goals revolved around providing 'affordable, healthy, and economically and environmentally sustainable food' (Orford, 2023). Although this bill was rejected in 2023 due to concerns over its projected costs and bureaucracy, it sparked an ongoing debate among the Welsh Government about the need for an integrated food strategy, prompting the government to publish an overview of its food policies and their integration with other policy areas and goals, such as around healthcare and education (Welsh Government, 2024a).

Regarding the political process, developing the CFS involved participation by food system stakeholders, including agroecological organisations. Multiple rounds of public consultations and surveys were conducted among producers and consumers to identify policy needs and explore opportunities and constraints for community food initiatives, as well as sustainable and healthy consumption (Welsh Government, 2022a). Findings from these surveys showed a strong demand for local community-produced food, yet relatively low engagement in active citizenship initiatives such as CSA due to their high price tag and lack of availability (Welsh Government, 2021a). To tackle these shortcomings, the government considered raising awareness and sharing funding opportunities for such initiatives, for example by showcasing the CSA Cae Tan as a best-practice example for community-based food provision (Welsh Government, 2022b).

# 5. Discussion

## 5.1. Achievements and shortcomings of the Community Food Strategy

The Welsh Government has undertaken significant efforts towards creating a more ecologically sustainable and community-oriented food system that move well beyond previous initiatives, bringing it closer in line with agroecological objectives. However, the envisioned changes do not sufficiently address the structural issues and unequal status quo within the Welsh agrifood system and thus risk reproducing

unsustainable practices and food insecurity.

### 5.1.1. Addressing power relations and path dependencies

Responding to many of the grievances and claims made by agroecological organisations, the Sustainable Farming Scheme offers new support for horticultural start-ups, on-farm public engagement, local food partnerships, and practices that integrate agricultural and natural environments, as well as lowering the minimum size threshold to 3Ha. Agroecological organisations consider this a major improvement over the previous system of direct payments:

> 'I think there's a lot of positive potential, because the shift towards paying for public goods and how you produce rather than how much land you have is so much better for small scale farms that use environmentally sustainable methods.' (R4)

However, subsidies overwhelmingly still target larger producers who have the land and capacity to grow tree cover, cultivate natural habitats, and monitor their nutrient output. While this can certainly benefit larger agroecological producers and CSAs, the 3Ha threshold and certain universal requirements will continue excluding many of them, especially new starters.

At the same time, the new subsidies do not incentivise conventional producers to change their production systems, merely to invest in environmental protection and restoration, which ultimately reproduces the dominant position of livestock farming. Additional support for horticulture may help small and medium-sized farmers but will not create any pressure for larger producers to reduce meat production or change business models, ultimately leaving Wales dependent on fruit and vegetables imports.

### 5.1.2. Multidimensionality of agrifood system change

The CFS sends important signals towards multidimensional food policy integration, for instance by aiming to strengthen local food partnerships and linking food to issues of health and education. It also works towards tackling food poverty by aiming to support low-income households, especially through free school meals. These measures could potentially have important long-term benefits, for instance towards improving children's nutritional health, so long as they remain in place.

However, it is highly uncertain to what extent this integrated perspective can withstand challenges of inflation, economic recession, austerity, and rising living costs. The rejection of the Food Wales Bill for financial and administrative reasons raises concerns in this regard. Moreover, while supporting food partnerships can potentially alleviate some symptoms of food poverty, it does not directly address structural issues such as the unequal pricing of healthy and unhealthy food or the existence of food deserts. Without extensive and enduring support for agroecology and non-market dependent distribution, as well as changes in public procurement and planning, food partnerships are likely to focus primarily on offering charity rather than developing and scaling up alternative provision systems. Consequently, food consumption would be further polarised between well-situated consumers with access to alternative food schemes, and lower-income households without it. Under these conditions, community-based and agroecological food provision would continue occupying a marginal niche, unable to inspire a systemic change towards an FE of food.

### 5.1.3. Active citizenship and democratic participation

Finally, the CFS both supports certain forms of active citizenship and involves meaningful stakeholder participation in its policy formulation. Support for food partnerships can help promote active citizenship practices and enhance their accessibility. Conversely, the multiple consultations and surveys among producers and consumers have given people significant opportunities for voicing their needs and interests towards the new policies.

On the other hand, the Government's plans for strengthening
community-based food provision remain unspecified and it is unclear to what extent stakeholders can continue participating in shaping the CFS's long-term development. This uncertainty leaves farmers concerned about the threat of possible bankruptcies during the transition period, or the potential long-term erosion of food quality standards due to increased international trade:

> ‘We welcome the change, but we don’t want to see a whole lot of bankruptcies from family farms that aren’t able to change quick enough. [...] Another big concern we have is the trade policy and the threat that poses to our standards and British farmers being out-competed.’ (R4)

It is also notable that the CFS never explicitly mentions agroecology as a policy goal. This inherently limits the visibility of the agroecology movement, potentially preventing it from receiving more influence in the policymaking process. At the same time, it also prevents the concept from being institutionally co-opted, which may protect the transformative nature of its active citizenship.

## 5.2. Implications for further policy change

To create an FE rooted in sustainable food production and universally accessible healthy food, the Welsh Government would do well to adopt some of the agroecological organisations' recommendations more diligently.

While the government can do little to change the country's unfavourable growing conditions, it could begin shifting the power imbalance from large livestock production towards sustainable farming by introducing minimum targets for the market share of domestic, social and agroecological food provision, as suggested by the Landworkers Alliance. This would also help expand community-based and sustainable food provision, including horticulture and public procurement. Through sufficient funding and land access agroecological networks would be enriched with new producers, whom they could train, scale up, and connect into short supply chains.

To address the high levels of food poverty in Wales, the government could also follow the social measures suggested by agroecological organisations, such as by stimulating wage increases, supporting food partnerships, and integrating food and social policy. This would not only account for the multidimensionality of an agroecological transition, but also help raise the accessibility of active citizenship practices such as CSA. Local councils could also strengthen food partnerships, such as by enabling agroecological producers to sell fruit and vegetables via public procurement, thus contributing to healthy school meals and nutritional education, especially for low-income households.

To balance liveability and sustainability in the FE, such a system would still require diverse production and distribution models at different scales, combining a substantially increased level of domestic (small and large-scale) agroecological food production and non-market-dependant distribution models with a necessary degree of retail and trade. Adopting the agroecological subsidies and transition targets suggested above could incentivise actors across scales to take up agroecological practices. Agroecological producers at any scale could also play an important role in food trade, such as by engaging in international fair-trade and developing common quality standards with other food movements. Interestingly, many CSAs advocate for such a diversified system themselves, as they are aware of the limited scalability of some of their low-tech growing practices, the limited accessibility of prosumer practices (R6), and their low competitiveness against retail prices (R5).

Ultimately, an agroecological transition to an FE of food cannot be sustainable if it remains limited to Wales. Despite devolution, the Welsh agrifood transition is tied to the UK's agrifood system, whose post-CAP policy reforms have been criticised for their overreliance on carbon capture and nature sequestration, and for paying farmers for lost profits rather than environmental and social benefits (Tilzey, 2024). As the UK

increasingly trades with non-EU countries, this approach risks externalising rather than mitigating social inequalities and environmental emissions in the country's food supply chain. In this context, the Welsh Government would need to promote its own emphasis on domestic production and social innovations, ideally including additional agroecological policies. As the Scottish Government has developed a similar agrifood strategy (Wach, 2021), the two devolved nations would need to explore whether they can leverage more sustainable change at UK level.

## 6. Conclusions

Agrifood policy in Wales is undergoing a contradictory development, simultaneously enjoying a unique opportunity for agroecological transition driven by a grassroots movement and supportive government, while also facing severe structural constraints due to its adverse growing conditions and dependency on livestock production and trade. In this context, the Welsh Government is taking significant steps towards making its food system more community-embedded and ecologically sustainable but falls short of satisfying the needs of an agroecological transition towards an FE of food.

As the UK's exit from CAP has initiated a major transition in agrifood policy, the agroecology movement has called for more funding, land, training, and public procurement contracts for sustainable production, and for raising the accessibility of healthy food for low-income households. The Welsh Government has taken up some of these claims, introducing new subsidies for environmental restoration and horticulture, developing new sustainable training programmes, and promising to tackle food insecurity. However, the scope of these measures remains limited, as policies do not incentivise a substantial shift away from conventional business models, while continuing to exclude many agroecological producers from receiving subsidies. The result is a compromise that largely reproduces the food system's dependency on livestock and trade, only adding efforts to offset carbon emissions and encouraging additional horticultural production at the margins.

From an FE perspective, an agroecological transformation of the Welsh agrifood system requires not only reducing emissions but also shifting dominant power relations, expanding active citizenship practices around community participation, and integrating food policies with other areas (such as health and wage development) to tackle food insecurity. Certainly, domestic agroecological producers can only contribute so much towards this goal, especially in a country with limited growing space, but their calls for more ambitious policies and transition targets can offer important inspirations to strengthen the Welsh CFS. Moreover, reducing food insecurity also requires addressing its root causes, including social inequality, climate crises, and global supply chain disruptions.

Facilitating such a systemic transition ultimately necessitates high-level policy change beyond Wales. As the Welsh CFS is embedded within the UK's post-CAP transition process, innovations from Wales will only have a lasting impact if they can inspire similar changes at UK level to prevent the externalisation of environmental emissions and social inequalities. Whether the UK's new Labour government is more likely to enable this remains to be seen. Beyond the UK, the Welsh case can offer insights into the opportunities and challenges of sustainable food system transitions in other small countries with similar conditions. It demonstrates that a transition away from the CAP system of land-based subsidies towards paying for environmental and social benefits can offer important opportunities for introducing agroecological claims into policymaking. Yet, it also demonstrates the difficulties of challenging the dominance of conventional agrifood businesses, whose interests continue to inform the design of policy instruments. Moreover, while Wales has the advantage of undergoing such a major agrifood system transition anyway and having a government willing to work with community-based initiatives, other small countries may be more committed to technological fixes (such as automation or carbon capture) or unwilling to work with agroecological organisations or communities.
Nevertheless, Wales may still offer a source of inspiration for those cases. Its combination of an engaged agroecology movement and a government sympathetic to the FE perspective facilitate a transition process that supports and relies on active citizenship. While the agroecology movement's policy influence and participation are still limited, this approach helps avoid both a purely top-down government strategy and the institutional co-optation of the agroecology concept. Rather than pacifying grievances, policy reforms such as in Wales are therefore likely to encourage further agroecological engagement and advocacy, building up pressure towards more ambitious changes in the long run.

## Funding

This research was funded by the ESRC under grant number ES/ S012435/1.

## Declaration of conflicts of interest

The author has no conflicts of interest to report.

## Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my colleagues at the Wales Institute for Social and Economic Research and Data (Julie Froud, Ian Rees Jones, Kevin Morgan, Karel Williams, and Filippo Barbera) for their advice and comments on earlier drafts of the manuscript. Thanks also to Charlene Marek and Adam Sheingate for including the manuscript in their ECPR conference stream and providing insightful feedback. Finally, I would like to thank the reviewers and editor for their constructive comments and feedback on the previous version of the manuscript.

## Data availability

Data will be made available on request.

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