Madam,

I have just viewed an excellent 16 May debate from the Scottish Parliament. It was entitled 'Brexit’s impact on food and drink'.

MPs from all over Scotland debated in detail the export worries of thousands of food and drink companies in their own constituencies.

Most of those exports are to Europe, due to its close proximity.

I have never witnessed a similar detailed debate, mentioning company after company, in the Welsh Assembly. It’s about time we had one.

Of course, UK exports pay for everything in the UK at the end of the day, including all our service industries and the whole UK public sector, because it is exports, both visible and invisible, that create an income for “UK Limited”. By far the biggest industries, over more than 90 per cent of the land area of Wales, are agriculture and tourism.

The biggest sectors of Welsh agriculture are sheep, beef and dairy.

There are almost ten million sheep in Wales and 92 per cent of export markets are within the EU.

Similarly, 93 per cent of all beef exports are to the EU. Slaughterhouses, food factories, bakeries, creameries, machinery dealerships, haulage firms and manufacturers are all subsidiaries or spin-offs of the agricultural industry. Garages, forestries, blacksmiths, farriers, hotels, etc, also depend on farming.

If the outcome of Brexit severely damages agricultural exports and reduces tariffs on agricultural imports from outside the EU, most of Wales won’t know what’s hit it!

If over 50 per cent of the sheep and beef were removed from Wales, the only possible use for that vast redundant land area of over 4,000 square miles would be gigantic wind turbines, which would then greatly damage the Welsh tourism industry and vastly reduce the value of tens of thousands of rural homes, because “the lovely view” from those homes will have gone for ever!

And what of the Welsh language? The rural economy is its bastion.

Yours etc, L J Jenkins, Gwbert, Cardigan.

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