FARMERS in Wiltshire will be growing poppies to make morphine from next year.

Coming in the wake of foot and mouth, the plan could be an opportunity for farmers in the area to expand into non-food crops.

The white and purple blooms, papaver somniferum, would be planted in 750 acres but the volume could increase if the project is successful.

Sowing for the poppy seeds which will make the powerful painkiller morphine will take place in March and the harvest will be ready in August.

The gap in the market was spotted two years ago by United Oilseeds, a farmers' co-operative from Devizes.

John Manners, its sales director, said: "Farmers are producing morphine in France, Spain, Turkey, and Tasmania and I wondered why we were not doing it here. I do not think it will be a big new business for farmers but there is a niche market."

Mr Manners was offered the seed used for producing heroin in Afghanistan by a Polish supplier and successful tests were carried out at three British experimental research farms.

United Oilseeds has now won a contract to supply poppy heads for morphine to MacFarlane Smith, an Edinburgh-based pharmaceutical company.

The poppy fields will be in Hampshire as well as Wiltshire because the ground is ideal.

Farmers will be paid £40 an acre when the crop is planted and £80 an acre after harvest.

Mr Manners said anyone hoping to raid the fields in search of an illegal hit would be disappointed.

"The drug content in the plant is minuscule. Extracting the morphine is a big commercial undertaking."

Richard Butler, chairman of the national cereals committee for the National Farmers' Union in Wiltshire, said: "Farmers welcome the opportunity to grow a wider range of crops, particularly if it results in higher prices for farmers.

"We also support trials for genetically modified crops.

"Increasing opportunities are being found for a wide range of products and it is predicted that in the future, 10 per cent of farming could be made up of non-food crops.

"However at the moment we seem to be rather trapped into commodity food production."