Will corporate land grabbing lead to a 'wipe-out' of family farms in Wales?
Some farmers in Wales are being priced out of land by corporate offsetting projects, leading to fears of a 'wipe-out of many family farms over the next 10 years'.
Land agents have also cold-called farmers with offers to buy their land on behalf of companies looking to offset their carbon emissions, according to Farmer Unions, which have condemned this as greenwashing.
Many locals have also reported being vastly outbid for land by companies who want the land for mass tree planting, but the true scale of this problem is unknown.
"I’m afraid if there isn’t some kind of government intervention, we could see the wipe-out of many family farms over the next ten years."
- MS Cefin Campbell, Plaid Cymru
Currently, the investment company Foresight owns six farms in Wales bought for afforestation, and 12 farms in Carmarthenshire alone have been sold for the same purpose.
Concerned locals have even begun petitions to prevent this from happening.
A petition to save Cwrtycadno and the upper Cwm Cothi valley has over 60,700 signatures
The petition is to stop Foresight from replacing the farmland of Frongoch with blankets of non-native conifer trees, which would destroy native biodiversity and ecosystems.
MS Cefin Campbell, Plaid Cymru, said: "Local people cannot compete with companies like Amazon, Tesco and British Airways who are using agencies like Foresight to do the bidding on their behalf. What that allows them to do is greenwashing.
"That is a licence to carry on polluting. Rather than reduce their own carbon emissions, they'll buy tracts of land in Wales and plant trees so they can use that as carbon offsetting.
"I think it defeats the object. They don't take responsibility for their own actions. They are using and exploiting Wales to offload the problems onto our communities."
Bob Davies is a hill farmer on Mynydd Epynt and the Brecon Beacons who says more and more farms are being bought by 'outsiders'
He said: "At the moment, at least 50% of the farms by us have been bought by outsiders, as we would call them.
"Several farms were bought by one guy. He came in then and just bought three of the farms that were sold there locally.
"Another one has been sold to someone who came in and planted the bulk of it with trees.
"More and more farms are going that way."
Big companies like Foresight, especially ones external to Wales, don’t have the personal investment in the culture and value of Wales that locals do.
Mark Morgan, a farmer in Wales’s Black Mountains, said: "I don’t think the big companies buying farms for carbon offsetting care.
"It’s a business decision. They don’t care that that’s some of the most productive soil in the UK. They’ll just do it because of the location and the fact that somebody will make money off the back of it."
Credit: Mark Morgan
Credit: Mark Morgan
Ben Lake, MP for Ceredigion, revealed that farmers in Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion and south Powys have reported entire farms as large as 300 acres have been bought by international companies to offset their carbon footprint with no regard for the natural environment.
He said: "To be successful, tree planting projects must have local control, with rural communities working alongside the Welsh Government so that they benefit from this transition.
"We must not allow businesses to buy farms, allow rural communities and the Welsh language to be undermined for the sake of a greenwashed business-as-usual."
Credit: Senedd
Credit: Senedd
Mr Campbell also said that he doesn’t think companies care about the landscape being changed forever or that productive land is being lost to tree planting.
While he doesn’t want farmland bought up for tree planting, he made it clear the importance of having more trees in Wales.
(Translation: "Great to be back at the Royal Welsh yesterday. A number of interesting and important conversations about the future of agriculture and our environment. Looking forward to another day of meetings and being out and about in the sunshine today!")
🐄 🐏 Grêt cael bod nôl yn y Sioe Frenhinol yn Llanelwedd ddoe - nifer o sgyrsiau diddorol am ddyfodol amaethyddiaeth a'r amgylchedd.
— Cefin Campbell AS/MS 🏴 (@cefincampbell) July 19, 2022
☀️ Edrych ymlaen am ddiwrnod arall o gyfarfodydd a chrwydro eto heddiw! pic.twitter.com/ahzkQa0M55
"It’s the right tree in the right place, for the right reason."
- Cefin Campbell
Case studies of farmers being outbid for land by big companies are emerging more and more often.
However, there is no way to know the true extent of corporate land grabbing as no comprehensive database exists in the public domain.
Credit: The Food, Farming and Countryside Commission
Credit: The Food, Farming and Countryside Commission
Jon Parker, Wales’s director for the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission, said: "The difficulty is it’s a private market, corporates can buy farms and remain under the radar. You don’t actually know how many farms are being purchased.
"We don’t really know a lot about them because they’re unregulated."
"It’s a little bit like the Wild West."
"There are bits and pieces being bought, but at the moment I don’t think it’s a huge amount."
Credit: Fraser McAuley
Credit: Fraser McAuley
Fraser McAuley, the senior policy advisor at the Country Land and Business Association, agrees.
He said: "It’s definitely something that needs to be considered.
"I would say the actual realities of it taking place within Wales currently is probably less than it’s been reported."
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