As all my friends and family know, I have a rant at this time of the year about oil seed rape, and as there are many out there who don’t know what it is, it’s that garish yellow crop patchworking our countryside.

First problem…its colour.  For those who like it, I propose that we grow in adjacent fields genetically engineered lurid blue lupin, snow white daisy and brilliant red poppy, so we can have a proper Piet Mondrian modernist country patchwork.  Perhaps we can dye the hedgerows black to complete the effect.  Look, England’s land is meant to be green and pleasant, the crops we grow should look right, feel right taste right and smell right, which brings me to…

Second problem.  If you can’t smell the chemicals that oil seed rape plants pump out when they are flowering, you must be nasally challenged.  I returned form the lovely Lake District (where they don’t grow it) after Easter to the Midlands and I could smell nothing else, even in the middle of Birmingham.  What you (should be able to) smell is a complex of isothiocyanates and other chemicals which are pumped out by flowering rape to attract pollinating insects, which brings to me my main issue…

Third and biggest problem.  A significant number of people, including myself and my daughter, are affected by these chemicals.  We get flu and cold-like symptoms, and it affects our brain chemistry, causing torpidity, irritability and concentration loss.  I estimate it affects 25% of people, most of whom think they have a cold.

Fourth issue.  The bugs and bees become addicted to these chemicals like heroin.  The honey then reeks of rape, and  wildflowers don’t get pollinated.  Ecologically very harmful.

Why do we grow it…cheap chip oil and it makes the farmers money through subsidy.

More information at www.oilseedrape.org.uk

I have just paid my £30 to The National Trust and become one of 10,000 MyFarm On-line Farmers for Wimpole Estate in Cambridgeshire.  It’s like Facebook Farmers but for real…join me, Farmer Kel at www.my-farm.org.uk/home. I shall be hoping to persuade my 9,999 fellow Farmers not to grow the yellow stuff.