SO, Caroline Lucas, our only Green MP, suggests we have a meat tax to help stop global warming.

If the Greens don’t want us to use sprays or artificial fertiliser, how will we keep the land in good order?

Cattle manure is the most natural and best for the ground.

If we stop eating meat we will not have milk, butter, yoghurt, cheese and other dairy products.

What does Caroline suggest we do with all the calves that are born each year from the cows that produce our milk, shoot them at a day old maybe?

I don’t say there are not animal welfare issues that should be addressed,but if a calf is born,it should have a pleasant life so eventually it can feed a number of people with beef.

It would be better to look at land ownership and speculators buying land as a safe place to put their capital.

They often don’t farm the land, it is rented out on short-term arrangements.

The farmer who rents the land doesn’t live on site, hence animals are not looked at each day.

Where we are having new developments one could include a self sufficient garden to grow healthy food.

One would not be able to produce meat or corn, but fresh fruit and vegetables, therefore it would lead to us having a healthy lifestyle.

Britain could produce more home-grown food, instead of importing from around the world.

We need to reform landholdings and create long-term tenancies.

Nicola Sturgeon in Scotland is making farm tenancy 35 years or to retirement.

That’s not a bad thing. One can still lose one’s tenancy for bad farming practice or debt but growing food to feed the nation is a long-term plan.

We have seen over the years governments destroying estates, by various taxes on death, which has killed off many good farming businesses.

We could have a tax relief on tenanted land, making sure there is a house on each farm for the farmer to live on site.

Where one owns 1,000 acres, have a system where it pays to farm say 50 per cent, then create two or three units for new entrants into farming.

We have many young people coming out of agriculture college who would like to have their own businesses and go into farming.

At the same time we are seeing many of those working on the land coming from abroad.

If we were to have real affordable housing in villages we just might see local people working on the land.

Maybe when we leave the European Union, the money we give to the EU can be instead used to create small farming enterprises, with the Government underwriting any loan given to those starting out.

Laurence Keeley Fairfield Herstmonceux