BY KRIS FORD

Dear Editor,

We suffer an ever-growing boom in “Conservationists” and “Ecologists” trying to save the planet and telling us how to do it in modest and extreme ways. Has anyone pointed out to them that their plans are as dumb as rocks?

It has been known for hundreds of years that plants and trees need carbon dioxide (C02) to grow and develop. Therefore if we reduce C02 emissions, plants and trees will weaken and die and won’t produce our precious oxygen, as essential to us as the C02 is to the plants. Now if we test the vegetarian and vegan war cry “don’t grow animals on the land, grow food instead”, a stark reality emerges:

Let’s start with Cows.

Assuming a ten-acre field containing ten cows, a single cow can provide up to 12,000 litres of milk during a single 10-month lactation period. That equates to 120,000 litres of fresh milk for healthy children, cheese, yogurt, ice cream etc. Beef is provided – also full of nutrition, not to mention bones for soap and fertiliser, leather for clothes, shoes, upholstery and all manner of things. The cows as they travel the pasture defecate which is a natural fertilizer for the grass and soil. The grass continues to function pulling in C02 for conversion to oxygen.

The vegetarians and vegans would have us slaughter the cows as neither are wanted or needed. We plant up the ten acres with lettuce, kale, carrots, cabbage and other leafy vegetables. The small plants need nutrients taken from the soil and those nutrients get replaced from where? Slugs, snails, carrot fly, aphids and a myriad of other pests feast on the leaves and tubers reducing the crop yield dramatically. Rabbits alone would decimate a ten acre field in a matter of months not to mention deer of various species. Any crops that do survive and provide a harvest are collected and processed removing all of the C02 devouring leaves. The leaves and other waste are turned into compost which in turn gives off the noxious gasses of C02, methane and nitrous oxide. The field is then left barren for months until new seeds are planted and germinate.

We have no leather by-product from the cows to upholster the vegans and vegetarians’ electric cars or provide clothes and shoes. No wool, no silk, no cashmere. So everything is synthetic, poly this and poly that, nylon, PVC, etc. In fact in today’s world more than 6000 items have been identified as coming from…OIL and petrochemicals.

So who are the bad guys? I’ll take the cows any day.

Yours sincerely,

Kris Ford

Angler, Author, Falconer, Ornithologist, Videographer, Wildlife Naturalist, Environment & Wildlife Consultant to MoD (retired) Landscape designer.