MAKING OSR WORK AGAIN

As pres­sure to deliver measur­able envi­ron­mental bene­fits increases, a new initia­tive is proving that oilseed rape’s early nectar could be its greatest value. After years of being demonised because of the need for neon­i­coti­noids to control pests, can growers embrace the crop again and help Britain’s bees in the process?

Over the past decade, the UK has seen the area planted with oilseed rape decline, by nearly 60% from its peak, as cabbage stem flea beetle (CSFB), estab­lish­ment risk and unpre­dictable markets pushed growers to rethink its place in the rota­tion. Many farms replaced it with safer options, opting for crops that don’t carry the same burden of risk or input cost.

Yet some­thing unex­pected has been lost along­side it. Bees rely on early flow­ering rape­seed when almost nothing else is avail­able, helping them recover from winter and build strong colonies. Without those early flowers in farming land­scapes, polli­na­tors are emerging from winter into what beekeepers call the “hunger gap” – a period of scarcity with real impli­ca­tions for biodi­ver­sity and crop produc­tion, too.

“I don’t think it’s ever been the wrong time to grow oilseed rape,” says James Warner, managing director at United Oilseeds. “While there have been chal­lenges over the past 10 years, plenty of growers have still produced excep­tional crops. That said, with gener­ally lower CSFB pres­sure and a much better under­standing of the pest, as well as industry-wide growing strate­gies and strong domestic demand, the agro­nomic and finan­cial rewards are now very strong.”

Rape­seed Reboot

In recent years, United Oilseeds recog­nised that if oilseed rape was going to remain part of prof­itable arable rota­tions, confi­dence needed rebuilding, following years of frus­tra­tion with CSFB damage and patchy estab­lish­ment. It aimed to do this through prac­tical solu­tions and shared on-farm learning, leading to the launch of the Oilseed Rape Reboot in 2024.

“Rape­seed is at the core of our busi­ness, and if anyone was going to fight for this highly bene­fi­cial crop, it should be United Oilseeds,” says James. “The campaign has snow­balled, but that’s testa­ment to oilseed rape’s place in rota­tions that the whole industry has wanted to get involved. It’s in strong demand, supports biodi­ver­sity, could bring up to £1bn per year to the economy, and is a vital source of home­grown oil and protein.”

A core part of that initia­tive has focused on breaking the CSFB life­cycle using simple, low-cost actions that slot easily into typical oper­a­tions. Based on research from Colin Peters at NIAB, growers should under­take shallow post-harvest cultivation to disrupt pupae in the top few centime­tres of soil. The research suggests a 50-90% reduc­tion in adult emer­gence where soil is fully disturbed.

“Some­times simple is best,” says James. “While we don’t yet have statis­tics for harvest 2025, a poll of our members in late 2024 found that 80% had adopted the method, which left us wondering whether this was a key factor that helped to reduce CSFB numbers the following spring.”

The Reboot also led the national CSFB larvae assess­ment, conducted by NIAB and supported by Hutchin­sons, Agrii and United Oilseeds, which collected 174 plant samples across the UK. The find­ings: Larval levels were down compared with recent seasons. While a few local hotspots remained, the wider picture is far more posi­tive, following a simi­larly encour­aging autumn decline in adult numbers.

“It’s often said that we achieve far more when we work together, and that’s exactly what’s happening,” says James. “We’ve all joined forces, sharing stories, data and projects, even with competi­tors. It might sound a bit cheesy, but it really is for the greater good.”

United Oilseeds has also put together the industry’s first united guid­ance on rape­seed estab­lish­ment. This includes 10 evidence-backed strate­gies created with input from seed breeders, researchers, crop advisers, and farmers. The goal is to move the crop back into a posi­tion of strength by combining inte­grated pest manage­ment prac­tices that work across different soils, seasons and planting windows.

“Having the industry united behind well-researched, consis­tent guid­ance is rare,” adds James. “We need to rise to the chal­lenge and keep using the proven tools to stay on top of CSFB.”

The Agrisound Pilot

United Oilseeds teamed up with agri-tech inno­vator AgriSound to quan­tify the biodi­ver­sity bene­fits of oilseed rape in real farming envi­ron­ments. The AgriSound Pilot Project is running across six United Oilseeds member farms in southern England, where 54 acoustic moni­toring devices are capturing real-time polli­nator activity across oilseed rape, legume fallow, and cereal fields.

Each solar-powered unit records not just the distinc­tive hum of bees and other insects, but also envi­ron­mental factors like temper­a­ture, humidity, and light levels. Together, these data streams create a detailed picture of how polli­na­tors interact with different crops and condi­tions throughout the growing season.

“As a firm believer in data-led deci­sions, I wanted to show just how impor­tant oilseed rape is for polli­na­tors,” says James. “We ran a small pilot across a handful of southern farms, and the data imme­di­ately showed there are five times more bees within a rape­seed crop compared to a legume fallow.”

This offers clear evidence of the crop’s excep­tional value to bees during the crit­ical early spring “hunger gap”. This real-world data rein­forces what researchers have long known about the mutual bene­fits between oilseed rape and polli­na­tors. Each hectare of flow­ering rape­seed produces an esti­mated 25m to 91m flowers and more than 50 litres of nectar, offering an abun­dant food source just as bees emerge from winter.

In return, research has shown that two bee colonies per hectare can increase rape­seed yields by 15-20%, improving pod unifor­mity and seed germi­na­tion. By quan­ti­fying these ecolog­ical inter­ac­tions, the AgriSound pilot is helping to demon­strate that bringing oilseed rape back into rota­tions isn’t just good agronomy, it’s a tangible boost for polli­na­tors and biodi­ver­sity at farm level.

“Data should underpin sound deci­sion-making,” says James. “That’s why we produced a briefing paper for govern­ment, lobbying on behalf of flow­ering crops within the rota­tion to promote biodi­ver­sity and help reverse bee declines.”

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FARMER CASE STUDY: TIM PARTON

In South Stafford­shire, Brewood Park Farm sits just north of Wolver­hampton, where farm manager Tim Parton has taken a distinct approach to oilseed rape. “We have been farming regen­er­a­tively for 17 years,” he says. “I try to farm as biolog­i­cally and nutri­tion­ally as possible. I don’t use insec­ti­cides, fungi­cides or growth regu­la­tors.”

The 300-ha arable farm, which Tim took over from his father, main­tains oilseed rape on a five- or six-year rota­tion. And while many farms stepped away from the crop in recent years, Tim has held firm, backed by strong historic yields and a system designed to keep the crop resilient. “I’ve had some really good yields in the past,” he explains. “This year it was down a bit because of the dry weather. But with the low price of wheat at the moment, oilseed rape looks attrac­tive.”

Tim direct drills and hasn’t moved soil for 17 years – rather than culti­vating to kill off flea beetle larvae, he adopts a different approach. “We companion crop with white and crimson clover,” he says. “It’s done to fix nitrogen and keep the ground covered. I started in 2015, and when we first intro­duced it, we were doing an extra 0.5t/ha on yield. So, I then rolled it out across the whole farm.”

The biolog­ical approach also extends to how Tim manages pest pres­sure. “I’ve had my own prob­lems with flea beetle in the past,” he admits. “Quite often, the beetles only attack the plant because you’ve got a build-up of nitrate and ammonia, where the plant isn’t synthe­sising prop­erly and converting it into sugars to put down as exudates. The other way that I deal with flea beetles is by strength­ening the cell wall.” “If I get the silicon and calcium content in the cell wall right, it makes the wall much stronger, so it’s a lot harder for the beetle to pene­trate.”

Tim uses sap testing to monitor the crop all the while to make sure that it has balanced nutri­tion; imbal­ances are then recti­fied through foliar appli­ca­tions of nutri­ents. The intro­duc­tion of the Sustain­able Farming Incen­tive (SFI) – which pays farmers to under­take envi­ron­men­tally friendly prac­tices – has influ­enced many UK farmers’ crop choices, espe­cially when rape­seed yields have been so unpre­dictable. For Tim, though, it wasn’t the right fit. “I’ve got good soil, and I haven’t got a grass weed problem. Because I’ve always done well with oilseed rape, it’s more attrac­tive than putting land down to SFI.”

Tim would remind other farmers that OSR remains a viable crop. “Other crops aren’t viable at the moment, and oilseed rape can still make some money. I person­ally have no worries about growing oilseed rape.” He’s also seeing wider bene­fits across the farm. “We’ve had a massive increase in bees and all insects on the farm,” he says. “We’re restoring the whole food chain.”