Sustainable Communities Bill

I do see that and I will come on to that very issue in a few moments, if I may. It seems to me that the particular requirement in the Bill could be used against the local food economy. When I started to investigate the impact of food on the environment, I thought that I would find myself concentrating on the issue of food miles, but it appears that transport is a tiny component of agriculture’s worldwide contribution to greenhouse gas emissions—and the main culprit is in the fields chewing cud. It turns out that livestock, predominantly cattle, are responsible for about 18 per cent. of the total of all emissions. A fifth of all our emissions—more than the emissions produced by the poor old tax-clobbered motorist—are due to cattle. About 70 per cent. of all agricultural land is used to raise animals and that amounts to about a third of the land surface of the planet. What is more, more than a third of all our cereal production goes to feed those animals. A recent UN report estimated that 160 millions tonnes of carbon dioxide are associated with the fossil fuels emitted by cattle.