Further to the commitment given in paragraph 153 of the Plenary record on 17 July 2024, will the Cabinet Secretary provide the relevant statistics and the data?
The figure you referenced came from the most recent Public Sector Food Survey for Wales, undertaken in 2022. The same survey has not yet been repeated, so we don’t yet have a direct comparator. However, we plan to undertake it again at the end of this Senedd term to measure the impacts of our Foundational Economy projects, to nurture local supply chains and increase supply of Welsh food to the public sector.
Developing and improving our local food supply chains is of course a a long-term change programme, but progress is already being made by these projects.
For example, the ‘Buying Food Fit for the Future’ online resource has supported an increase in Welsh food supplied for school meals through Castell Howell by 173% (£854k in 2021 compared to £2.3m currently).
This has been largely due to Caerphilly Council, applying the ‘Buying Food Fit for the Future’ food procurement guidance to the South Wales Food Framework, awarded in April and used by 15 local authorities. The framework includes a Welsh lot for the first time, providing local food choices for councils. Out of 150 lots, Castell Howell won 100, ensuring security of supply and retaining money within Wales.Since the launch of this resource, Castell Howell have also reported an 86% increase in Welsh food supplied to NHS Wales (£598k to £1.1m).
In addition, our Food Sense Wales’ ‘Welsh Veg into Schools’ project, has developed 8 new growers to increase supply of Welsh produce for schools. Consequently, they are supplying around 40 tons of organic vegetables into schools across 6 local authorities. They have also grown a whole new acre of carrots (10 tons) for schools to address recent supply shortages, which resulted in them being imported from China.
These projects will finish by March 2025, at which point a full evaluation will be undertaken. Results of that should be published by summer 2025.