Sir, Joanna Lumley has provided as spectacularly shallow and one-sided an appraisal of the role of farmed livestock in climate change as one would expect from an enthusiastic vegetarian (“Holy cow! We’re crazy to farm livestock like this ”, Oct 16).

For a start, the entirety of UK agriculture only contributes 7 per cent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, not the 18 per cent which she attributes to livestock farming alone. But, in any case, these figures take no account of the beneficial impacts that livestock have on GHG emissions: the millions of tonnes of carbon that are locked up in grazed grassland, and which would be released if that grassland were ploughed up to grow crops, or the millions of tonnes of oil that do not have to be used to produce artificial nitrate fertiliser, thanks to the organic fertility that comes out of the back ends of farmed livestock.

Rather than lecturing people on what they should or shouldn’t eat, those who are genuinely concerned about the climate change impact of livestock farming should be looking at how to put all that methane to beneficial use, through anaerobic digestion and similar technologies.

Anthony Gibson
National Farmers’ Union

Sir, Joanna Lumley may be a fine actress, but her knowledge of history and agriculture amounts to a cloud of methane.

When Britain had an agricultural economy, a thriving wool and leather industry, and before the advent of steam power, railways and the internal combustion engine, millions of animals were kept in rural areas and cities. Animals were used not only for food but also for transport and motive power in agriculture and industry. In the pre-Victorian coaching industry alone, hundreds of thousands of horses were used, with some proprietors owning more than 1,000.

If animal emissions are such a big contributor to global warming, what does Ms Lumley imagine happened 200 years ago and longer?

Helen Baws
Ludlow, Shropshire

Sir, If we have green grass and other plants and feed them to cows in the process of producing meat and milk, they will produce methane. If the same green plants grow and are not eaten by animals, these plants will die and decay in the soil, be broken down by bacteria and produce the same amount of methane, without the benefit of feeding the human race. We could of course have a scorched-earth policy as in the desert; neither I nor my cows would appreciate that.

Richard Hanby
Lower Apperley, Glos

Sir, While Ms Lumley’s actions to help to prevent global warming are admirable, her solution seems extreme, and typifies the problems that occur when answers to global warming are proposed. Cultural and ingrained habits are hard to shake and people are not going to change from what is easy to actions that are harder to undertake. Solutions have to be easy and practical, using technology and providing through normal market forces the green alternative. Forcing, cajoling and taxing solutions will simply turn people against taking action.

Ms Lumley is also extreme in suggesting that we reduce our meat consumption outright. While deforestation is taking place to rear cheap beef cattle, it is also taking place to grow soya. If people focused on eating locally sourced meat and dairy and indeed vegetable products they will ensure that the environment is protected, and their cultural dietary habits can be kept, while also encouraging the local economy and preventing deforestation.

Elliot Grainger
Leamington Spa, Warks

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