Dairy products are causing cancer.

[Rheghead]

I don't think you are getting my point.

Farmers can produce enough to feed the UK population, that's agreed. What we are currently debating is biodiversity.

What I am trying to find out from you is whether you want farmers to produce the food or whether there should be some sort of land redistribution, whereby we all have our own plot as in medieval times.

If you want farmers to grow the food, your vision of lots of biodiversity will not work. there would still have to be farming on an industrial scale, i.e. monoculture. Do you know how much a pea harvester costs? To justify buying one, you need a huge acreage of peas. Same with potatoes, carrots and any other vegetable you can name. I think your vision is of farmers having a few rows of each, something like an oversized allotment. It can never be like that because of economy of scale.

So, we have established farmers will be growing food in huge single crop fields, no real biodiversity there especially as huge amounts of pesticide would be used, unless you allow GM crops bred to be pest resistant (new thread perhaps?) Any land not used would soon 'scrub up' as there are no animals to graze it. within 50 years new trees are established, within 100 years all unfarmed land is forest with poor diversity, particularly in the more northern parts of the UK where it will be mostly pine which is a really poor environment for biodiversity. What happened to all your butterfly meadows? Your vast plains of grassland with wild animals free to chase and eat each other? Buried under elder, willow ash, bracken and alder, soon to be followed by oak, beech etc.

Will we be allowed to continue growing wheat and barley? Thinking of malting barley specifically, because in this new world we are all going to need a drink! Based on last years crop about 650,000 acers were given over to malting barley. Not much wheat grown in this country is suitable for milling, most is feed wheat, so I assume we will be allowed to import Canadian?US wheat for bread, or are we all going gluten free too?

Neither, market forces will take care of it all. Of course there will be farming on an industrial scale as is now but only on a very much reduced land footprint. As the demand for meat and dairy falls, a lot of the land used for growing crops for animal feed will just be not needed. There will be no profit in keeping it looking like a farm. Wild animals and plants will just simply move in which would require minimal management by us.

There will just be an abundance in food that it will be cheap to produce and consume.

I didn't say all the land will turn to forest or all the land will turn to meadow, that is just misrepresentation of my posts on your part. What determines the final landscape is the underlying geology and nature will take its course, the land will be diverse.

Pine forests are not a poor environment for biodiversity, they are a rich environment for biodiversity. There can be eagles, bears, wolves, fox, badger, lynx, deer, etc etc.

On another point, I think we should put a higher value on foods that are healthier, safer and better for the environment. Currently the UK administers £3bn in farming subsidies. About ~80% of this money goes to animal livestock, this makes the products cheaper at the shops, the rest goes to largely suger producers. All the wrong priorities!. The government can do much to redistribute that subsidy to make plants cheap to buy. This extra money could buy specialist machinery for growing food for a vegan population. It will also raise food prices for meat and dairy and cause economic pressure to grow healthier plant food. I believe the Green party have policies that address this.