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Will Britain ever see George Monbiot’s sheep-free fantasy?

Would England be the same without the sight of sheep grazing on its ‘green and pleasant land’? Most likely not; but, then again, that might not be a bad thing. That is George Monbiot’s view.

Spectator readers will already know what Monbiot thinks of the humble sheep. Last summer he wrote about how we ‘pay billions to service a national obsession with sheep, in return for which the woolly maggots kindly trash the countryside’. ‘Britain’, he wrote, ‘is being shagged by sheep’.

BBC Countryfile took up the subject of sheep hill farming (Monbiot’s chief bugbear) on Sunday night. This method of farming has its fair share of controversies. For starters, it is heavily subsidised by the government and the EU. Many environmentalists, Monbiot included, also blame it for destroying the natural environment of the uplands, and transforming them into the ‘bowling green monoculture’ that we see today.

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