SIR — I have read in the Free Press the letters written in anger about the cattle grazing North Hill.

Although I am not a serial writer of complaints as I know I am very privileged to live in beautiful West Somerset, this time I feel compelled to write in response to those already sent.

I fear that Mr McNeill, P T Martin, Ms Harrison and Ros Robinson have lost their sense of morality, compassion and responsibility we all must have to allow and encourage our British farmers to contribute to feeding an ever-increasing national and global population.

I'll explain my thought process. Hundreds of years ago North Hill, like much of the country, would have been heavily wooded.

The need to feed growing populations gently encouraged the landscape to evolve and as a result of farming – which produces the food we eat – North Hill took on the spectacular and rugged appearance it displays today.

Would you be surprised to know that wheat was once grown on the very top of that hill and there are the ruins of ancient farmsteads under the gorse?

Farming and indeed grazing livestock have shaped North Hill over the centuries and as a result have won the hill national park status, encouraged development of nationally rare habitats (and as a result parts have been awarded 'Site of Special Scientific Interest' status) and created a network of pathways which we all so obviously enjoy walking.

You may feel that a handful of cattle make little contribution to our national need for food – but who else, if not ourselves, should provide food for Great Britain?

My pride and ethics would not allow me to take food from a third world country when I know we have the capacity to produce our own and we're not making the most of it.

It would be prudent for your writers to remember that the landscape in which they walk on a Sunday afternoon, at their leisure, has been managed by our local farmers for generations in such a way as to encourage precious habitats, encourage recreation and tourism but, most importantly for us all, produce food for our ever-expanding bellies.

While we sit by our log fires and complain that we have had to walk the long way round the hill this week, or through mud, that we were kicked by a cow as we passed by(too close in my opinion) or that the cows have been 'imported' from afar, it would be wise for us to consider what we will lose if we bully our farmers off of this land, and who the responsibility to manage the hill would fall to.

You? I myself do not fancy spending my leisurely Sundays using my lawn mower to cut paths through the bracken.

My advice to your readers is to spend their weekends enjoying North Hill as we all so love to do.

But do not consider it your right; consider it your privilege to have access to such a wonderful landscape which someone else is prepared to manage for your pleasure, for your belly and for your nation's heritage.

Consider it a privilege and treat that privilege with the respect and the common sense which it deserves.

Andrea Witcombe,

Minehead.