WHEN the sun catches them at the right angle, it's like a light bulb shining in your eyes.

The glare from a field of polytunnels is probably not what the Good Lord had in mind when he designed the English countryside, but times move on.

While everyone would prefer to see rolling green landscapes filled with gambolling lambs and herds of cuddly Hereford cattle, farmers know there is a diminishing return for traditional agriculture these days.

So new methods have surfaced and few of them are more controversial than the growing of horticulture crops under sheets of plastic.

Safe in a cosy polytunnel, tender plants are protected from the vagaries of the weather. Wind and frost can't hurt them and the warming effects of the sun are magnified so they grow faster, bigger and more succulent.

Larger quantities make their way into the shops and this means lower prices. So we should all be happy. Not on your Nellie.

There's no such thing as a free lunch and in this case the price to be paid is environmental. Not damage to the land or even the air, but to the appearance of the countryside.

As photographer colleague Roy Booker put it when describing his experience of coming across a field of polytunnels, "I thought the place was flooded, until I realised it was on a hillside!"

Now the anti-tunnel brigade has at last found a figurehead.

TV presenter Monty Don, who lives in the Herefordshire village of Ivington, has put his head above the parapet.

It should be said that he has a vested interest. Because almost on his doorstep Europe's biggest strawberry grower - a company called S & A Davis, which has an annual turnover of £30m - wants to put 55 hectares of land under polytunnels, quite apart from a "workers' village" of 300 caravans, plus facilities like a swimming pool and cinema.

This is an area virtually twice the size of Malvern's 70-acre Three Counties showground. Or one that would contain 650 tennis courts.

Herefordshire's traditional landscape of hop yards would be flattened and replaced by a huge plastic lake.

Never known for being reticent, Monty has come out with all guns blazing.

"This isn't farming at all," he said.

"It's work that could be done on an industrial estate.

"The soil is sterile, it is appalling and it produces junk food of the highest order. They are churning out low quality food at the expense of the landscape.

"Farmers have got to accept they don't rule the earth and they have to become moral citizens.

"It is clearly unnecessary, grotesque and a pillaging of the countryside that will seriously affect tourism in this beautiful part of the world. People will not come to gaze at hundreds of acres of polytunnels."

Monty has undeniably got an aesthetic point. Plastic fields are one of the most horrendous sights Man has created. They are offensive to the eye and, as I have experienced, can dazzle the motorist when a low sun catches them.

But Monty has had his salvo returned with interest.

Neil Gow, director of two large garden centres and lives at Crowle, just outside Worcester, knows him of old.

"Monty Don is already well known in our industry for being 'anti-chemical' and has made derogatory remarks about garden centres," said Neil.

"Now he appears intent on bashing the food production and nursery stock industries too.

"Perhaps Monty would rather buy plants produced in Holland, Italy and Spain or eat strawberries and salad crops produced in some far-flung land, all of which are shipped to this country by a transport system burning vast amounts of fossil fuels.

At Great Witley, salad farmer Nigel Drew dismissed the presenter's claims as "poppycock" and said the issue was being blown up out of all proportion.

"Less than 0.1 per cent of Herefordshire's arable land is covered by polytunnels," Nigel added.

"There has to be a balance from all sides, but I totally refute the idea these tunnels are an eyesore.

"If you wish to compete in a very competitive market, we need to use polytunnels. Farmers can't afford to pay for expensive crops and grow them exposed to the British elements."

Almost certainly, the answer to all this is in moderation. No one could complain about the odd field being put down to polytunnels. But when it gets to twice the size of the Three Counties showground, that is a quantum leap in landscape change.

If, as Monty Don claims, these "plastic crops" could be grown on an industrial estate, perhaps we have at last found a use for the Millennium Dome.