An environmental adviser says she would score the Welsh government a D grade if she was marking its homework on how it is helping agriculture to adapt to the effects of climate change.

The government’s policies and plans in this area had shown “insufficient progress’’, according to Dr Niki Rust, head of land, agriculture and nature at the UK Climate Change Committee (CCC).

“If I was marking this homework for the government I would probably give them maybe a D, so not very good,’’ Dr Rust told farmers attending the recent NFU Cymru Conference in Llandrindod Wells.

The CCC had examined the main threats to agriculture in Wales but that assessment had been “very, very hard’’ due to insufficient government data, was needed for trends to be evaluated and for the monitoring of the progress being made.

“What we need the Welsh government to do more of is to collect more data so that we can assess what is the state of the situation here,’’ said Dr Rust.

Data was available on soil carbon concentrations and that showed that these have remained relatively stable in Wales over several decades, but there are areas of concern, including a reduction in the number of pollinators.

The CCC’s assessment had also shown more action was needed to make Welsh soils resilient to the future effects of climate change.

It is a similar picture for carbon stores – it is thought that more carbon was lost during Storm Arwen in November 2021 than gains made from trees planted that year.

Meanwhile, emissions from the Welsh agricultural sector have been “creeping up’’ since 2010, and that will make achieving net zero by 2050 “very challenging’’, Dr Rust warned.

“We are going to have some very tricky decisions here because we are really quite far behind so it may well be that we will need deeper and quicker cuts from other sectors because the agricultural sector, especially when it comes to tree planting, is quite far behind.

“However there has been policy progress – help available through funding to help farmers reduce their emissions, but not enough though.’’

How farmers could be impacted by the race to achieve net zero is an area of concern with Dr Rust insisting “we cannot throw farmers under the bus’’.

“I do not want to see a repeat of what happened in the 1980s.

“I live in the north east and know the effects of what happened to the mining industry there and the political decisions.

“I don’t want to see a repeat of that in the agricultural sector as we get in this race to net zero.’’

Criticism was directed at investment and pension funds buying up land and becoming ‘green lairds’.

“It is affecting the social fabric of rural societies so I think, yes we need to get to net zero, yes we need to solve the joint nature and climate crises, but it cannot be at the expense of rural communities,’’ said Dr Rust.