Why climate change means goatmightsoon bethe new beef...

It's popular outside Europe, but many people here in the UK might never have eaten goat meat.

- WILLIAM HOSIE

Our restaurant critic David Ellis says it's delicious: like lamb but tougher and tastier, best in a stew or slow-cooked dish. You'd better brush up on your recipes for casseroles, then, for in the next few years you could be looking at rows of goat's meat next to dwindling portions of beef on UK supermarket shelves.

Climate change is transforming the way we farm all over the world: and in those parts most directly affected by the crisis, cows are out in favour of less demanding grazers which can survive on less food and water. In the Limpopo region of South Africa, pastures that have long teetered on the edge of collapse are beginning to farm goats, who are more adaptable than both cattle and sheep, surviving off the leaves and fruit of the acacia tree. They are also becoming a popular farming animal in Brazil, the world's second largest producer of beef after America. It comes as Donald Trump announced on Monday that he was pulling the US out of the Paris climate agreement and after 2024 became the first year on record where the average global temperature exceeded 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.