Year of Food and Farming by Tony Cooke

Kids invade countryside to find the REAL Shaun

Wallace and Gromit fans out there may have also seen Shaun the Sheep from the same studio, Aardman Animations. It's currently on Childrens' BBC and attracts a massive audience, young and old. If you've not seen it do, it's hysterical. We're delighted to have teamed up with Aardman to organise a 'Find the REAL Shaun' competition starting this Easter holidays. The idea is that kids and families go out looking for the lamb that most closely resembles Shaun, take a photo of it and enter the picture on the special website we've set up. The winner will receive a priceless original still from the series, signed by the director. We're expecting an army of kids taking part in this - we have already warned the National Sheep Association! It should provide families with a great reason to visit the countryside and have some fun at the same time. The competition runs until the 7th June, so it should help swell the numbers for Open Farm Sunday too.

Joy on faces at NIAB launch

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the launch of a joint project between NIAB and Cambridge University Botanical Gardens in support of the Year. The pair are inviting local schools to get involved in growing activities, planting seeds and following them through to the end crop. There was wide representation there on the day and interest from local radio too. The politicians were out in full force with David Howarth (the local MP), James Paice (Shadow Agriculture Minister) and Jenny Bailey (Mayor of Cambridge) to name a few.

The highlight of the day was the look on the children's faces - they were clearly having fun and learning at the same time.

Can I thank the teams at NIAB and CUBG for their commitment to this project and wish them well in its future success. This is just exactly the kind of local, grass roots initiative that can inspire children to take an interest in where their food comes from through their own first hand experiences. See my space on the YFF site for pictures (link on the 'Introducing myself' entry)

Grumbles at Plumpton launch

I attended the launch of the South East region's Year of Food and Farming website by Jim Brathwaite, the chair of SEEDA (the RDA for the South East) on Friday at Plumpton College. Can I thank the team for organising such a great event - I was really impressed with the level of commitment and thought that had gone into creating what I am confident will become a really valuable communication tool for food and farming with consumers, schools, children and parents in the region. You can visit it at www.yoffse.org.uk or follow the link from the megamap on the national site at www.yearoffoodandfarming.org.uk. There was a great gathering of agriculturalists and educationalists present to get a test drive of the site, so I was dismayed by comments from a number of farmers in the room that any effort to host school visits should be met with financial compensation for the time spent and facilities added. I'm afraid I simply don't buy that; first, if you are thinking of hosting school visits then you should know the cost implications beforehand and either accept these with a happy heart or seek to establish paid for visits as part of your farm's enterprise mix. Second though, and ultimately more importantly, is that whilst we are calling for school farm visits for the immediate benefit of children, there is serious longer term benefit of these same visits to farmers. These children are our consumers of the future and getting them onto farms is part of developing their 'agricultural literacy' - an understanding of where food comes from, which ultimately leads to them valuing food more as part of their lifestyle. As farmers we have to see the long term return on investment in the relationship we have with our next generation of customers - it's crucial to our survival.

5,000 schools sign up in 4 days!

Last Friday, we launched a free tomato growing kits scheme with help from B&Q for 5,000 schools. We have had an overwhelming response - within four working days, the entire allocation had been snapped up. This is an incredible response and tells me two things: first, there is a huge latent demand out there from schools for getting kids involved in growing food. This scheme in combination with the existing British Potato Council's 'Grow your own Potatoes' scheme and the Garden Organic scheme, along with the new RHS 'Campaign for School Gardening' means that at least 750,000 children, or nearly three quarters of all primary schools, are now taking part in growing food this year, - an outstanding achievement! Second, it tells me that the local, regional and national networks that have developed and improved during the course of the Year have become an incredibly effective means of spreading the word about opportunities to our target audience. The B&Q scheme was promoted solely by email through these networks , so thanks to everyone out there who played a part in making the promotion of this scheme such a success. Needless to say, B&Q are delighted too and we are now going back to them to see if we can have more kits - there's so clearly a demand. Watch this space!

Presenting to a school - an idiot's guide

I did a talk in school for the first time on Monday. I wanted to see first hand what it was like. Luckily a local school were having a science week and they had found my details from the megamap on the Year of Food and Farming website. It was a really fun morning and I would recommend it to any farmer as really enjoyable. The school were so grateful for me coming and had organised everything in advance so I went straight from one group to the next (Yr1&2, Yr 3&4, Yr 5&6). They were having a science week and were complementing my talk with cooking and growing activities for everyone. This is a school in a really run down ex-mining community, so if they can do it, anyone can. Props are essential. I took a cardboard box with the following: a bag a wheat, a magnifying glass (to look at the wheat closely), a packet of breakfast cereal, a packet of flour, a loaf of bread, a packet of rich tea biscuits, a bottle of rapeseed oil (Mellow Yellow to be precise - alright Duncan!), a tub of margarine, a bunch of bananas, a mango and a lemon (to show what we can't grow in the UK) and an NFU 'Why Farming Matters' pack (use the picture cards as a prop during your talk). I also did a powerpoint presentation, which seemed to work really well. If anyone wants to use it as a starting point, then you will find it as a downloadable resource on my YFF space at http://www.yearoffoodandfarming.org.uk/spaces/tony-cookes-farm/General.aspx. As you might expect, at the end of the talk, there was a lot of interest from the school in coming and making a farm visit, so this is a great way of promoting your farm for a visit either in school time, or for Open Farm Sunday. The bottom line was it was easy and really enjoyable. If I can do it, anyone can.

Rescuing a generation of 'Concrete Kids'

I was frankly stunned when I first saw the results of the research we commissioned prior to the Year starting. I have been hosting visits from inner city schools on my farm for years and was well aware of the level of ignorance children (and parents & teachers) brought with them to the farm. It has always been immensely satisfying to send them home much better informed and with many of their urban myths unpicked. But as an individual farmer my experience was anecdotal and I had no real sense of the extent of the level of disconnection from the land. The 'Concrete Kids' research, as it has become known, illustrates the stark reality of an almost complete lack of basic 'agricultural literacy': - At least 1.1m children have never been to the countryside. That's equivalent to almost every child in London - As many more have only ever been to the countryside 'once or twice' in their life - This means children are twice as likely to go on a foreign holiday as they are to visit the countryside - A quarter of all 8-9 year olds have never touched a farm animal - 1 in 5 children have never picked fruit and eaten it. This rises to 1 in 3 in the North East, East Midlands and 1 in 4 in Yorkshire - Nearly half of all children have never even visited an allotment By contrast: - 91% of all children have collected a takeaway, with nearly half having done so five or more times in the last year (this is as high as two thirds in the North East) - 40% of all children visit 'virtual worlds' on the internet at least once a month - A quarter of all children have gone late night shopping 5 or more times in the last year - A quarter of all children have travelled on an underground tube 5 or more times in their life - Nearly 30% have been in a building 10 storeys high 5 times or more - Nearly all (96%) of all children visit supermarkets once a month or more (a third do so most days and over half do so most weeks) - Over three quarters (78%) visit restaurants at least once a month (1 in 4 most weeks, 3% never) This all points to increasingly sedentary, urban lifestyles with a declining level of interaction with nature and the countryside, and by extension, with food and farming. Most children's contact with food is entirely at the supermarket or restaurant end of the chain and this shows up in their level of ignorance about food production, as the following results show: - 43% thought that horses were used in crop production - 1 in 4 thought that lawnmowers were used in the harvest, with a further 18% being unsure - 14% thought that bulldozers were used to harvest crops - 1 in 5 don't know potatoes grow under the ground - 53% think bananas are cultivated in this country - 15% think lamb isn't produced in Britain - Only half know that pumpkins grow out of the ground This ignorance extends even to famous national food icons and knowledge of their origins: - Over a third didn't know pork pies originate from Melton Mowbray (only 11% of Leicestershire children knew the answer) - 1 in 4 don't know pasties come from Cornwall - Only 1 in 5 knew hotpot was from Lancashire (even 13% of Northwest children thought it was from London) - 20% of children in the Southwest believe that Cheddar originates from the Midlands However, the ray of light that we must all cling onto is that we mustn't mistake this ignorance for apathy. There is real genuine interest from children to know more about their food, with over half of all children caring where it comes from, with children in the Southeast and East Midlands being particularly concerned. What's interesting is their reasoning: - 52% want to know where it's been before they eat it - 45% are concerned to know because it helps them decide whether it's healthy or not - 43% want to be sure that animals have been well treated, this rises to 51% amongst 12-13 year olds - 31% don't trust food from a factory, or that has been over-processed, this rises to 43% amongst 12-13 year olds - 27% want to support people working in the countryside - 22% want to eat food from near where they live I'm certain that if we were to compare these results with the adult population, we would find that there is a much greater level of concern amongst children. Perhaps their idealism is yet to be eroded by the realities of having to make ends meet, running a household or the temptations of a BOGOF, but for now it gives me great cause for hope that we have something to work with. That's why I'm so motivated to do something about it. I was at a local primary school giving a talk this morning and I was struck by the level of interest from children. What also amazed me was the lack of awareness that the adults had of the children's level of knowledge. The whole event has acted as a catalyst for the school to do something about it, and I fully expect an army of children, parents and teachers invading my farm on Open Farm Sunday on 1st June. I hope readers will think about open their farm gate too, or help a neighbour that already is, to do their bit too. The evidence now clearly demonstrates that simple first-hand experiences such as visiting a farm, growing plants or cooking a meal are by far and away the most effective way of changing children's relationship with food. For example: - Almost two thirds of children who regularly visit the countryside care where their food comes from, compared with 60% of those who don't who 'aren't bovvered'. - Actually seeing food being grown creates 'visual reinforcement', which increases children's nutritional knowledge by 22% - Furthermore, it increases their positive food preferences, making children much more likely to try broccoli (+20%), mangetout (+31%), courgette (+30%) and carrots (+9%) - These food preferences even extend to foods which they don't see produced, indicating that exposure to outdoor agriculture has a general improvement effect on children's food choices With such willing students and with such an opportunity to inform and influence the attitudes of the next generation of consumers, now is the time if ever there was one for joining together to rescue this generation of 'Concrete Kids'.