Sir, Alistair Currie has recently argued in Centre Write that food security “demands we eat more veggies.” (Apr, 7) This was not merely a plea to eat more homegrown British vegetables, but a call for a wide-scale adoption of vegan diets by the population and endorsement of seismic changes to food production and land use which this would require.
Veganism may be a well-meaning philosophy, but there are significant flaws with attempts by activists to engineer radical top-down changes to land management.
The vegan argument asserts that “livestock offers a less efficient calorie conversion than crops for direct human consumption” and that “Growing plant foods … requires far less land, feed and fertiliser, reducing dependence on imported food and commodities.”
The mathematics adds up in the abstract, but is not so convincing when considered alongside practical realities. It relies on the idea that using “far less land” for agriculture is an inherent good, portraying farming and environmentalism as always being mutually exclusive. This is not the case. Well-managed, balanced and rotational farming practices have significant environmental benefits by improving soil health, increasing biodiversity and sequestering carbon.
Well-managed livestock grazing in particular can play an essential role. This is especially relevant in Britain, where changeable weather and varied landscapes cannot reliably produce high-quality crop yields each year, including to a standard considered fit for human consumption. Besides poor weather, disease and market forces also impact arable success. Livestock can diversify a farmer’s livelihood in a volatile sector. All this on top of providing a natural source of fertiliser, essential for organic farmers.
It is easy to attack farming in general rather than to scrutinise specific types of farming. Factory-style animal farming, for example, raises ethical and environmental questions. However, mixed family farms still operate and many consumers are awake to the fact that supporting local British produce, including high-quality meat, is both responsible and achievable.
Failing to distinguish factory-intensive from balanced farming practices, and restricting all farmers as a result, means that all farming will continue to suffer, thereby leaving less money and incentive for looking after the land and animals alike.
Indeed, the UK Food Security Report 2024 acknowledges the value of rare and native farm animal breeds that are associated with “traditional land management required to conserve important habitats.”
Game meat, too, is essential for game management, and is often the only source of income for landowners that “is viable without substantial public or private subsidy, and the only one that invests in maintaining high quality heather moorland.” Some vegans have even formed a curious affinity with game hunters, supporting the activity for the way it incentivises conservation and sustainability.
The Ten Point Plan, endorsed by The Vegan Society, ignores all these benefits, and instead advocates for reforesting much of the non-arable landscape.
Rochelle Blakeman
London
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Sir, Dr Bulmer’s article ‘Conservative case for a written constitution’ (Dec, 12) presents a serious case for a written constitution. Dr Bulmer is right that many of our problems are constitutional, and right that the customs which once bound the unwritten constitution have begun to fray. But his remedy is the wrong one, for a Burkean written constitution is a contradiction in terms.
As Edmund Burke himself recognised, the authority of the English constitution is that it has existed “time out of mind.” It binds only because it has always bound. To attempt to write down all the efficient and dignified elements of the constitution would be to freeze it at one particular moment and to prevent it from growing organically any longer, transferring its authority to a static decree. You would not be codifying the constitution; you would be replacing it with something that has no claim on us but for its own novelty.
Dr Bulmer is right that conservatives can no longer stand for nothing. But the duty that calls us is not to write our constitution down; it is to live up to it.
Manraj Atwal
London, UCL