Different shades of green? Differentiation of hill farming in North Wales, what will be the impact of the future Welsh Agricultural policy?

In the last 20 years Welsh Hill farming has faced many challenges; long-supported specialisation in beef and sheep production systems has been called into question as the policy focus shifted and markets have offered poor returns. Drivers of evolution changed and some near-extinct enterprises have reappeared in the Welsh hills (e.g. dairying, poultry), linked to both market and policy changes. Two in-depth agrarian diagnoses in hill and upland areas of North Wales (Bala and the Vale of Clwyd) show a differentiation of production systems. The apparently homogenous pastoral landscape now sports different levels of management and land use intensity (in fodder output, stocking rates and livestock types). Farms have become increasingly polarised depending on their business opportunities, and these farmed landscapes in Wales are changing rapidly. With the Brexit process and in the context of Covid, changes have intensified as the farming sector seeks to adapt and plan ahead. We assess the likely impact of possible Welsh and UK governments’ future policies in the emerging market context, to understand their likely impact, using a typology of production systems in the two landscapes. On this basis, we expect the trend of polarisation in the Welsh hills to continue, raising some challenges for future policy aspirations.