In the fields there are squares of bright yellow oil seed rape. The crop has only been grown commercially on a large scale since the Second World War, changing the look of the landscape (not unpleasantly – sometimes the effect can be very striking, like a Van Gogh landscape). Oil seed rape, as the name implies, is used to produce oil (used in processed food and for commercial applications).

Use of genetically modified oil seed rape is EXTREMELY controversial, and although it is being introduced covertly into the United Kingdom there is likely to be a widespread backlash against the politicians who are allowing this to happen.

The experience of BSE (which could have infected virtually the entire population) has made the British population very cynical towards government pronouncements about food safety. “Experts” from the cross-national corporate-governmental nexus cannot understand why the bland assurances of safety that have worked in America and Canada do not work here. It is because same experts issued the same bland assurances on the impossibility of BSE infecting the human food chain that they have zero credibility on the subject of genetic modification (I would like to see heavy prison sentences for politicians and civil servants found lying on this issue).

The Prince of Wales has put forward the suggestion that the whole of British agriculture should go over to organic methods of production. In marketing terms this makes sense as in globalised markets it would give British farm produce a unique identity throughout the world and justify higher profit margins (unlike the present situation where we are producing generic products that can’t compete with the economies of scale in the factory farms overseas). It’s unlikely anyone in the government will take up this idea and make it policy.