IN response to Mark Smith’s article stating that a tax on meat would help tackle climate change (“Tax on meat would serve up healthier lifestyles”, The Herald, November 25), I would like to highlight the green credentials of Scottish agriculture.

Scotland’s livestock sector boasts one of the greenest, and most sustainable, production systems in Europe. Scotland has an extensive, grass-based livestock sector blessed with cattle and sheep that are incredibly efficient at converting our grass, heather and forage in to healthy, tasty Scotch beef and lamb for a growing population.

Over-simplistic knee-jerk proposals for global solutions to global warning fail to recognise that local geography is important in analysing environmental impact. In Scotland, the capacity of soils and peatlands to store carbon should be recognised, as should the fact that our extensive agricultural systems revolve around livestock grazing on our hills and uplands. The management of these grasslands by farmers also sustains and improvse the capacity for the land to effectively store carbon.

Despite global intensification of many food production sectors, Scottish livestock production remains tied to hills and uplands – land unsuitable to grow crops but fantastic for growing grass and rearing stock. That in turn supports a red meat sector in Scotland that sustains thousands of jobs and is vital to the rural communities that make Scotland a dynamic and vibrant place to live and work.

Tom French,

NFU Scotland Regional Chairman,

Balgray Farm, Crawfordjohn, South Lanarkshire.