WHILST I agree with many of the Climate Change Committee’s proposals to hopefully achieve net zero by 2025 and, as referred to in Mike Baldwin’s letter of last week, I disagree with their aim to reduce meat consumption and to plant more trees on good agricultural land.

I love trees, I am a member of the Royal Forestry Society, a Life Member of the National Trust and over the last 25 years we have planted many trees here on our farm in the Exe Valley.

The National Trust have been extremely fortunate in being given thousands of acres of prime agricultural land as well as beautiful and less productive areas like the Lake District. Now, however the National Trust intend to re-wild 620,000 acres of their land.

I was brought up on the Killerton Estate, generously given by Sir Richard Acland to the National Trust in 1944.

He left his 7,000 acre estate in Devon and his 10,000 acre Holnicote Estate in Somerset to the National Trust, still the largest single bequest of land to the charity.

This was given on the strict proviso that the Trust allowed the tenant farmers to continue to farm the land and that its natural beauty be preserved and enjoyed by many people.

The National Trust are now taking prime Grade 1 agricultural land out of production for re-wilding. Yet we live in a country where we still rely on 40 per cent of our food being imported!

I know of one local second generation tenant farmer of the National Trust here in mid Devon who has been persuaded to forfeit his long held agricultural tenancy to enable re-wilding to take place and is devastated at having to stop farming.

The National Trust are, in my opinion, completely wrong in taking highly productive farmland and planting trees all over it. There are many upland areas of England where they own unproductive agricultural land and where tree planting can and should take place.

Robin Thomas

East Raddon Farm

Thorverton