Paid to have children on your farm?
Date Published: 11th March 2022
We’ve all heard the story of the city kid who didn’t know carrots grow in the ground or that milk came out of a cow. You would hope that things are better these days and children are taught more in schools about where their food comes from.
Just knowing where your food comes from is fine in theory, but still, so many people are disconnected from the land that grows their food. They haven’t got a clue what effort goes in or what resources are needed to fill the supermarket shelves.
On a simple level, if people don’t understand how farming works, how will they make informed decisions on what they buy when they walk up and down the supermarket aisles? How are they even going to have an opinion?
The world of farming and food production is massive, impacting the landscape. Yet, it is an alien world to a large proportion of the population.
Thoughts like these led to a group of like-minded organisations, including CSA Network UK, to sign a joint communication to Defra. Here we outline the argument that it would be better for us if farmers were incentivised to bring more of the public to their farms.
Future Environmental Land Management schemes need to have some form of public engagement built into their structure to be successful.
You can find out more about the joint statement on the Land Workers Alliance website here.
Do you encourage visitors, especially children to your farm? Have you turned visits to your farm into an income stream already and would a payment scheme encourage you to do more? Let us know what you think via email.