Rape gets right up my nose.
Oilseed rape that is.
In the 1970s, oilseed rape was barely known in Britain. Many people were suspicious of this alien seed which announces itself with its all-pervasive perfume, reminiscent of honey to some, cloyingly sweet and as sickly as regurgitated baby milk to others. Now it is our third largest arable crop. The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) says that in the past year alone production has gone up by an impressive 17%. Next year, it is tipped to top 2m tonnes. In terms of acreage, oilseed rape now accounts for 11% of the crops cultivated in the UK.
I have issues with this stuff on several levels. It’s bright yellow. Now I like flowers, of many colours, but fields and fields of this glaring acid yellow are just not nice, not pleasing to my eye. It’s cloying sweet stench makes me sneeze, brings out my son’s asthmatic tendencies - we think he’s growing out of his asthma but this stuff sets him coughing and spluttering. It’s taking over our previously varied landscape and a lot of it is GM. Don’t get me wrong, GM is not necessarily a bad thing. Human kind has been genetically modifying things for thousands of years - it’s called selective breeding. It’s the lab splicing that I think is taking it too fast with little or no care for the consequences.
The glare of vast expanses of acid yellow make driving dangerous, it’s mind numbing in it’s intensity along the M1. I’d rather see fields of wheat, potatoes, strawberries, sweetcorn, well, anything really, just some variety.
Then there’s the name. I’m not alone in my visceral reaction to it.
Not only is the blossom out, but the fields are bright yellow because the oilseed rape has flowered. As a child, I remember being rather charmed by the inversion of the phrase: oilseed rape into rapeseed oil. Now, in mentioning it to the children (Gloworm gets hayfever so has a personal interest in when it flowers), I cannot bring myself to just call it ‘rape’. I have to always refer to it as ‘oilseed rape’, no matter how redundant and clunky my sentences become. (Imogen Howson - April 2007)
My kids ask, what’s that smell, what’s that yellow stuff. I find myself mumbling, muttering, stumbling over the name. It’s Oilseed rape. But why call a crop plant that? Why call it Rape? Is it raping our countryside? I hate that. The misuse of words. It’s a plant, it grows where it’s planted.
Rape noun, verb - raped, rap·ing.
The unlawful compelling of a woman through physical force or duress to have sexual intercourse.
Any act of sexual intercourse that is forced upon a person
An act of plunder Violent seizure, or abuse; despoliation; violation: the rape of the countryside
No mention of a plant there.
It does so very well as a crop because it loves chemicals. The fields full of oilseed rape are also full of pesticides, weed suppressants, artificial fertilisers. Lovely. How very wonderful for our countryside, and it’s spreading, growing on the verges, turning up in gardens like the triffids. It’s taking over…..
I think I’ll start calling it Canola.
