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I accept that we can do tree planting or all of those things, but we should still have livestock as part of the equation. I simply cannot see how you can take livestock out of the natural cycle.

Let me ask you another question. If we take all the livestock off those areas, what are we going to do about the deer and the hares?

Given Scotland’s diverse topography, from its coastline to the top of its hills, are those 51 farmers representative of everyone across the entirety of that topography?

Thank you.

I have a quick supplementary on that. You said that the market does not reward the kind of farming that will inevitably reduce output. However, is the other side of that not that we demand or require food that is affordable for the people who are going to buy it? How do we square that up?

I will follow that up very quickly. I agree with you, particularly about the sheer power of supermarkets driving what people eat. However, we also have a cultural demand in this country for cheap food. It has been one of my bugbears for many years—stack it high, sell it low.

If we do what we are talking about too quickly, how will we get the people who are buying the food on board with that change of culture? Effectively, we are talking about trying to change our culture. We are trying to do that with the Good Food Nation (Scotland) Act 2022, and we are trying to do things gradually. If we do things too quickly, how will we get the public to buy into that?

Your survey was of 51 people. I have been in farming for most of my adult life and have never yet met a farmer who would want to give up their livestock on the basis that livestock are bad for the environment. They might give up livestock because they cannot make money from them, but that is usually a forced choice rather than a cultural one. I simply cannot see how a pastoral country such as Scotland, with the topography that we have, will ever be able to be livestock free. We have heard from RSPB Scotland that livestock create biodiversity and can help us to maintain the areas that we want to maintain. I have seen and done that myself. I do not see how livestock-free farming, especially at 2,000 or 2,500 feet, can ever be anything other than non-viable.

Okay.

Ian, you say that farming livestock is the worst thing that we can possibly do in agriculture. What do you have to say about the example of Macedonia, where they got rid of their livestock completely?

Okay. Thank you.