Nobody likes a fun sponge, but I do struggle with some of my teenage kids’ more unorthodox fashion moves, even if I vaguely understand the thinking behind them – my son’s habit of sporting his jeans underneath his bum, with jockey shorts fully exposed is vaguely reminiscent of a peacock on display.

Also, most of the girls’ fashion choices are an understandable sacrifice of comfort for visual effect, but unless you have teenage girls of your own you won’t believe the latest accessory – fishnet socks. It's not like you can even see them really. They must be the ultimate triumph of style over substance.

It might not be immediately obvious, but if you bear with me, I think there is possibly a connection with the organic opinion on genetic modification.

These are very choppy waters for a near virgin columnist, but fools rush in etc. Plus, I have a few organic pals, so I’m not going to totally put the boot in - which might just mean I will manage to avoid a witch hunt.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of keeping things as natural and pesticide-free as possible. We have successfully grown potatoes without pesticides in the past (although there is an argument that the gas burner we used to control weeds had a bigger environmental impact than spraying diquat might have done).

We also use lots of predators in our soft fruit crops, such as nematodes for vine weevil, tiny cucumeris mites to eat spider mites and also parasitic wasps to help control aphids in soft fruit crops. The wasp larvae have a particularly gruesome way of devouring the aphid from the inside before emerging Alien-like from its mummified carcase. It’s a bug eat bug world and that’s the truth.

I’m also conscious that perhaps we conventional farmers don’t always pay as much attention to the soil as we should, preferring to focus on what we can see above the surface such as pest and disease, and forgetting about looking after all the beneficial microbes and other flora and fauna beneath the surface.

These contribute considerably to a healthy and disease free plant, so I’m sure we have much to learn from organic growers in this respect.

The various organic bodies are, like me, big fans of mixed livestock and arable units as a sustainable and bio-diverse method of farming, particularly on the light sandy land we have near the sea.

There is a big swathe of farms from the Borders to the Black Isle who are farming sustainably with grass leys in their crop rotation. They receive no recognition for this, however, which I think is grossly unfair, particularly as I’m one of them.

I’m fully in agreement with my organic chums that healthy and

stress-free plants are far less vulnerable to pest and disease. Our strawberries are vulnerable to mildew and aphid attacks if they are not well fed and watered, and the same applies to other crops, although they don’t have the luxury of the ‘umbrella’ that our fruit crops have.

The organic advocacy of long rotations for intensive crops, such as potatoes and carrots, is utterly sensible. Nematicides have a big impact on soil fauna and the more we can reduce the use of them the better.

As a brief aside: supermarkets have an iron control over the producers that supply them, so why don’t they demand a 1 in 7 minimum rotation for main crop potatoes? The growers would benefit too, as prices would be higher with less production.

I can also completely understand (even if I find it a bit fundamentalist) organic bodies’ viewpoints on non-organic pesticides and fertiliser – the clue is in the name, after all.

So, don’t think I am anti-organic. I think it’s a great niche market and we conventional farmers certainly have much to learn from the organic sector, not least in soil research and marketing.

The problem I have is that to alter a plant’s genetics slightly to confer resistance to disease or pests seems to me to be a natural fit for someone trying to avoid the use of pesticides and I can’t understand why the Soil Association et al have kicked it into touch.

You might not have heard Professor Ottoline Leyser, who runs the Sainsbury Laboratory, at Cambridge University, on the Life Scientific on Radio 4, but if you do find a spare half hour, it’s well worth a listen on BBC I-player.

The gist of her argument for the use of genetic manipulation is that genes are not strong and stable, they are actually a ‘complete mess’ across species and we shouldn’t be too precious about them. In fact, conventional breeding techniques over the millennia have changed plants far more than introducing the odd gene from another plant here or there would.

Professor Leyser pointed out that seeds, for instance, are actually plant babies – no cereal plant would actually want us to eat its children. It has been bred out of recognition to feed us, as have all the other crops we grow.

What valid scientific justification has the organic lobby to argue against the use of GM to confer disease and pest resistance in plants? I do understand the desire to protect the organic brand, but at the end of the day I think they suffer a loss of credibility for not being brave enough to explore the possibilities ¬– and then maybe rule it out later.

The Sainsbury Laboratory has just received permission to start carefully controlled trials of blight resistant potatoes in England. That must sting a bit at the James Hutton Institute, in Invergowrie, which was at the forefront of GM research into blight resistant potatoes for many years until the Scottish Government halted trials and finally decided to ban GM research in 2015.

This was done not because they believed any scientific evidence that GM research is dangerous (there isn’t) but because of public opinion and the fear that the Scottish food and drink brand would be damaged by not doing so.

So, I end with a plea to my organic friends to ask the Scottish Government to lift their ban on GM research. There might be something in it for all of us, conventional and organic grower alike.

And, to the Scottish government – please have the courage to try and persuade public opinion that careful research into GM methods of controlling pest and disease might just be a great way to reduce pesticides.

You have a chance to front up here. If not, you run the risk of ending up in the same laundry basket of opinion as those fishnet socks – sexy for some, but ultimately just full of holes.