Changing colour

These days the landscape shouts out that the message from the National Farmers' Union, about the need to diversify crops is getting through to the custodians of the land.

Latest addition to the rolling rural scene is the opium poppy, papaver somniferum. Now fields of the lovely pink flowers may be found hidden away off small roads, particularly around Ipsden, south Oxfordshire, where farmer Guy Hildred is growing about 200 acres of the beautiful crop.

He sells it to Edinburgh company Macfarlan Smith, a subsidiary of multinational Johnson Matthey, to be turned into morphine for use in hospitals and throughgout the NHS.

Mr Hildred, who together with his father David and some neighbours, farms about 8,500 acres, said: "This is the fifth year we have been growing opium poppies commercially. A merchant approached us originally and we decided to give it a go."

That merchant was John Manners, a businessman who saw an opportunity for producing English morphine for his company, United Farmaceuticals - now also part of Johnson Matthey.

He told In Business: "The morphine poppy is different from the usual red variety which grows wild on roadsides and waste ground.

"In the late 1990s I went on a business trip to Poland and came across a breeder of morphine poppies. I thought to myself that if the poppies could grow in Poland they could grow in England too .

"Then in 1999 I obtained a licence from the Home Office for various experimental husbandry trials. And in 2001 we undertook the first field trials - at Guy Hildred's farm in Ipsden."

But, despite its beauty, the morphine poppy has an infamous history. It was the cause of two 19th-century wars with China, the so-called Opium Wars, during which the British Government used the addictive drug to open up the lucrative Chinese market.

Then again, also in the 19th century, many British people, including poets Coleridge and Keats, became addicts of laudenum, a substance derived from poppies.

And now, of course, the British Army is waging a campaign against growers in Afghanistan, as poppies represent the raw material for 90 per cent of the world's heroin.

The problem with poppies is that they can bring misery, when used in the shape of heroin; or kill pain when properly administered in the shape of morphine. But here Mr Manners is keen to destroy a myth.

He said: "The poppies produced on the barren lands of Afghanistan are not suitable for the modern chemical methods of producing morphine."

And apart from that little-known point, highlighted by Mr Manners, there is also another, better known - but more sinister -one: illegal heroin dealers offer more money than legal producers of much-needed morphine.

Amazingly, despite opium and its uncontrolled derivatives becoming widely recognised as dangerous during the latter part of the 19th century, (notably with the publication of The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins in 1868, a novel that villifies them), it was not until 1920 that the Dangerous Drugs Act finally made it an offence to posess them without a doctor's prescription.

But one historical question remains unanswered. Why, during the long years of high and uncontrolled demand for opiates during the 19th century were opiates mainly imported?

David Hildred, father of Guy, dismissed the notion that climate change might be the reason why they now flourish.

Mr Manners said he understood that a certain amount of poppies were indeed grown in Britain, even in those days.

Fact file

Papaver Somniferum, or opium poppy, is grown extensively in Afghanistan to supply 90 per cent of the world's illegal heroin trade n Poppies grown in Afghanistan are less suitable for converting to morphine, used as a painkiller in hospitals, than those grown in Oxfordshire

Oxfordshire-grown poppies are sold to Edinburgh company Macfarlan Smith, a world leader in the production of alkaloid opiates and other controlled drugs

Founded in 1815, Macfarlan Smith has manufactured and developed active pharmaceutical ingredients for nearly 200 years. It specialises in opiate narcotics such as codeine and morphine. The company is now part of multi-national giant Johnson Matthey