AIC at 20: Achieving a greater focus on Welsh policy with AIC Cymru
As AIC marks 20 years as the UK agri-supply industry’s leading trade association, we're looking back at some of its greatest achievements since it was founded in 2003.
Each week throughout 2023, we’ll explore a major achievement where AIC represented its Member businesses, promoted the benefits of modern commercial agriculture in the UK, and supported collaboration throughout the food chain.
As it's St David's Day (1 March), we look at how AIC enhanced its representation of Welsh agri-supply businesses and achieved a greater focus on devolved agricultural policy matters.
Welsh representation
In 2021 AIC began developing a greater presence in Wales, spearheaded by its new Welsh Policy Manager Michael Muncey.
This work helped to ensure that AIC Members had a clear voice in Wales ahead of local elections in May 2022, and provided representation to the Welsh Assembly and stakeholders in the country.
AIC Cymru was officially formed in 2022 with an agreed constitution, an elected Chair and Vice Chair, and a strong representation of Member companies that are headquartered and largely operating in Wales.
This offers greater value and better engagement with Welsh Members, to agree on their needs regarding evolving Welsh Government agricultural policy.
Engagement
AIC Cymru has wasted no time in providing input to Welsh policy areas, including responding to the Welsh Government’s consultation on its Agriculture (Wales) Bill.
It has also represented Member views to the Welsh Government on the Sustainable Farming Scheme framework published in July 2022, and Nitrate Vulnerable Zone limit extension licensing in February this year.
Working closely with key stakeholders including Welsh Meat Promotion, NFU Cymru and Farmers Union of Wales has yielded closer alignment on cross-industry messaging.
Watch the video below to find out more about AIC and the work it does on behalf of its Members.
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Visit the AIC at 20 webpage for more content like this.
Authors
Oli Hill
As Head of Communications, Oli creates and oversees the content published on AIC's website, emails, Member briefings, print publications, and social media. A qualified multimedia journalist, he previously spent six years working at Farmers Weekly magazine as a Senior Reporter on the arable team, and latterly as Community Editor. More recently he was Communications Manager at Red Tractor.
