SIR — I consider myself fortunate indeed living in Minehead, surrounded by beautiful hills and situated on the edge of The Exmoor National Park.

I take none of this for granted and count my blessings all the time, but I do realise that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder and that the majority of our people choose to live in cities and the ever increasing urban sprawl.

Apparently the key word to justify this existence is "buzz", something which appears to be missing from our countryside.

With our ever increasing population, more land will need to be turned over to housing and as the countryside shrinks it will become more expensive to live in it.

I would like to make a prediction based on current trends which I believe will develop sooner than most of us would like.

Recently it was announced that it is now possible to create an acceptable meat product by culturing protein cells in the laboratory.

I predict that before one can say "Where have all the grazing animals gone?" ingenious commercial GM sources will have produced tasty "meat" products in huge stainless steel vats.

This trend will have very positive effects on climate warming, which will be reduced by the absence of grazing animals which are a serious source of methane.

Our farmers, who are continually being screwed by middle men and supermarkets to sell their produce at a loss, will find their land increasing in value as property developers buy it up for housing, wind farms and factory units.

The national parks of course will still be there for people to enjoy, although there will have to be entrance fees, since like stately homes they will need maintaining when the farmers no longer do it for free.

I also predict an increase in rural theme parks with interpretation centres, essential so that visitors can understand how it was in the days when farms produced our food.

Given the apparent inevitability of this progress, although naturally we have every sympathy with our dairy farmers who can no longer make a living, we can always bring our milk in from abroad as we do with everything else.

When I was young, one of our Prime Ministers coined the phrase "Export or die" - thank goodness this no longer applies now that we have quantitative easing.

Peter Tremain,

The Parks,

Minehead.