Madam,

With Boris Johnson’s latest proposals regarding Ireland, the biggest loser will be rural Wales, whose most important export commodity by far to the EU is Welsh lamb, where it is now a well-known branded product after over 40 years of market building.

Wales is 8,005 square miles in area, with 9.7 million sheep. Meanwhile, the Republic of Ireland is a much larger 27,133 sq miles with 3.5 million sheep and Northern Ireland is 5,455 sq miles with two million sheep.

With extremely basic, if any, Irish border checks on farm produce, it is obvious that millions of lambs will end up being slaughtered as “Irish Lamb” in the republic to be exported to ready EU markets tariff-free, whilst Welsh Lamb will be subject to ruinous, uncompetitive 40 per cent import tariffs. Ireland will obviously increase sheep numbers rapidly on ample land to meet EU demand. They’ll have the market to themselves.

Since the Welsh economy on over 90 per cent of the area of Wales depends on two very large wealth-creating productive industries, agriculture and tourism, on which a plethora of service industries and the huge public sector ultimately depend , the ruination of the sheep industry, plus huge damage to beef farming and the export of Welsh food products, will cause chaos.

Thanks to Welsh farmers, it is the “golden hoof” of our sheep that have created the wonderfully scenic rolling green pastures of Wales, which contribute greatly to highly inflated rural property values, sold largely on the strength of “superb views”. Take the sheep away, and many farmers will replace them with gigantic wind turbines up to 400 feet high. These will collapse rural property values and damage the tourist economy of many areas.

Urgent action needs to be taken to avoid this disastrous scenario, otherwise Wales is facing an economic armageddon.

Yours etc, L J Jenkins, Gwbert, Cardigan.

Have your say on the local issues affecting you - email [email protected] or join in the conversation on our Facebook page