Britain has 17.5 million hectares of agricultural land.
65% of it cannot grow a single crop.
Too thin. Too high. Too wet. Too steep. The kind of slope where a tractor becomes a story they tell in the village pub for generations.
It grows grass. Because grass is what evolved to grow there.
The cow eats the grass. The sheep eats the grass.
Your stomach cannot eat the grass.
Take the ruminants off and the food production from that land becomes zero.
Not lower.
Zero.
The ruminant is not blocking a better option.
The ruminant is the only option.
The activist who wants the ruminant removed is not reducing meat consumption.
He is outsourcing it. To Brazilian feedlots on cleared rainforest, shipped six thousand miles in a refrigerated container.
The British hill goes to bracken.
The Amazon goes to soy.
The supermarket label changes from Hereford to Mato Grosso.
This is presented as the ethical position.
It is the most expensively packaged self-deception in modern politics.