Beyond Supermarkets
Rebuilding the foundations of Welsh food security, farming and rural livelihoods.
One farm at a time.
Beyond Supermarkets
Rebuilding the foundations of Welsh food security, farming and rural livelihoods.
One farm at a time.
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Community Benefit
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Intergenerational Wellbeing
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Food Security
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Accessible Housing
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Community Benefit
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Intergenerational Wellbeing
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Food Security
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Accessible Housing
Wales in 2026
A System Failing on Multiple Fronts
The pressures on Welsh food, farming & rural communities are usually tackled one at a time. Foodbanks, subsidies, abstract climate targets. But they share the same roots, and piecemeal fixes have failed to hold.
Facing severe food deprivation in worst affected areas
These Are Not Separate Issues
They are symptoms of a single system reaching breaking point
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1 in 8 Welsh households are food insecure
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In the most deprived areas, 37% face severe food deprivation
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1 in 4 Welsh adults have cut portions or skipped meals to manage costs
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1 in 8 parents report their children are going without food
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31% of food bank users in Wales are in paid work
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Welsh farmers have been documented using food banks, squeezed by input costs and cash-flow collapse
Food Insecurity
Food insecurity in Wales is widespread and deepening, and it is no longer limited to those out of employment or requiring state support. Working households, children and even the farmers who produce our food are going without:
Agricultural Decline
Since 2000, roughly 1 in 3 commercial farms in Wales has disappeared*. Unsustainable supermarket pricing and soaring input costs have driven thousands of livestock and dairy holdings out of production.
Active farm threshold: 5+ hectares, minimum commercial herd, 550+ hours of recorded labour annually. Micro-plots, hobby holdings, and land retired for corporate carbon tree planting are excluded.
*How this is measured: The Welsh Government identifies an “active farm” using specific legal and economic thresholds. To qualify, a commercial holding must manage at least 5 hectares of utilised land, maintain a baseline commercial herd size (such as 10 cattle or 20 sheep), and require a minimum of 550 hours of recorded agricultural labour per year. Micro-plots, non-commercial hobby holdings, and farms retired completely for corporate carbon tree planting are excluded from this active data.
*Estimate based on survey effort at Bedford Purlieus Woodland by Dr George Peterken, scaled to individual farm holdings.
The Ecological Evidence Gap
National assessments confirm substantial biodiversity loss across Wales. But those figures rest on a narrow band of well-recorded species: birds, mammals, butterflies. Fungi, lichens, bryophytes, and most invertebrate groups, which together make up the majority of species, remain poorly understood.
Most farmers are willing, often keen, to support biodiversity on their land. The problem is the evidence base they're being held to.
Producing a genuinely detailed ecological picture of a single farm could take years of specialist survey work and cost more than £80,000.* Replicating that across Wales would require a workforce and level of funding that don't exist.
Asking farmers to meet obligations built on data that can't yet be generated at farm scale is an infrastructural failure, not a scientific one - The evidence base needs to catch up before the obligations do.
Climate Instability
Climatic instability is now a fixed feature of farming in Wales. Drought, flooding, and unseasonal conditions disrupt production with increasing frequency.
Meanwhile, the food system has grown more centralised and more dependent on extended supply chains that were designed to function under stable conditions that no longer exist.
Rural Housing
Rural housing costs have broken away from agricultural wages, making it harder to live where the food is grown.
Farm labourer: £25,000 – £30,000/year
Average rural property: £250,000
Economic Extraction
The £100 million question
In the twelve weeks to March 2026, farmgate milk prices fell to their lowest level in years. Retail dairy prices rose by more than 5% over the same period.
NFU Cymru estimates that between October 2025 and March 2026, approximately £100 million was removed from the Welsh rural economy as farmers were paid below the full cost of production.
That money did not disappear. It was captured by intermediaries who operate in near-complete insulation from the consequences of their own pricing decisions. When a very small number of retail buyers wield that kind of power with no accountability for its effects, the result is not market inefficiency, it is both an economic and ethical failure of the current food system.
Beyond Supermarkets
Our framework positions capital formation, resident labour, processing capacity, and verified carbon removal as mutually reinforcing components of a single economic system.
How It Works On The Farm
No new legislation needed. It delivers against the Well-being of Future Generations Act, and offers a practical route for the Sustainable Farming Scheme.
Wales has a planning instrument no other UK nation has: One Planet Development. Beyond Supermarkets reframes it as infrastructure, anchoring labour, housing and production to a working farm. Each farm brings four things together:
2026 - 2030
Phased Delivery Timeline
Built to be implemented, not left on the page
2026
Pilot
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2027
First Enerprises
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2028
Build Capacity
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2030
Refine & Scale
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Who Makes It Work
Built by the people who live and work it
Existing Dairy Farmers
New Farm Enterprises
Let's Build Together
No single sector can fix these issues alone. Beyond Supermarkets brings farmers, public bodies, private capital and communities into one unified effort, each doing what it does best, on the same land.
The future of our food system will not be decided by reports, however well argued. It will be decided by people willing to put new visions into practice.
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Existing dairy farmers Explore reorganising your farm
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Start a farm enterprise Register your interest as a future resident-partner.
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Public bodies and policy partners Align a programme with us.
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Investors and partners Help establish & build the first farm enterprises
The Details
Beyond Supermarkets In Full
Access our full documentation which sets out the evidence, model, delivery timeline & the references in full