Agri-food Partnership

The aims are to help producers become more market focused and add value to Welsh food through:

• Better co-ordination between producers, processors and others in the food chain 
• Support for the development of new products
• more sophisticated marketing of Welsh food

This is being headed by the Agri-Food Partnership which draws together all of the interest groups in the food chain to build on the industry's existing market strengths.

The partnership is industry-led and supported by the executive resources of the Welsh Assembly Government.

It currently works through nine action groups, four of them responsible for All Wales strategy, four charged with carrying out the work of the partnership at regional level and one cross-sector group looking at areas which affect agriculture in general. Each of the four strategy groups focuses, via an Action Plan on developing a key area of the Welsh Agri-Food business in line with market demand. There is also close co-operation with Hybu Cig Cymru who will be taking the Red Meat Strategy forward.

Each Action Plan analyses the threats and opportunities facing each sector, provides a plan for future development, identifies projects to achieve industry goals and objectives and develops a means of delivering the plan.

The broad thrust of the Partnership's Work is to generate closer co-operation between primary producers and food processors.

This includes help for farmers, fishermen and other primary producers to improve their businesses through training, support for product development and access to market information and new technology.

The ultimate aim is to enable the Welsh Agri-Food sector to keep in touch with market demand and respond quickly and profitably to new opportunities that arise.