Sixth Open Farm day proved a big hit

Despite the best efforts of the rain thousands of people were able to discover life on the farm across Yorkshire as Open Farm Sunday celebrated its biggest year yet.

Feedback from farmers and visitors alike indicates that, once again, the fantastic commitment shown by the farming and food industry, resulted in a day that was as successful and enjoyable as ever with an estimated 120,000 people visiting a total of 362 farms that opened for the sixth event.

Among the visitors were Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman and Farming Minister Jim Paice who visited LEAF farms that opened in Alcester and Ely, as Defra showed their support for the initiative. Caroline Drummond, chief executive of LEAF (Linking Environment And Farming), said: “This year was another successful Open Farm Sunday so well done to all who took part and made it happen. We really appreciate all the hard work that went in to each event. Our thanks go to the hundreds of farmers (and their friends, families and neighbours!) who either opened their farm gates or helped at an event.

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“This year we saw a rise in the number of collaborative events where two or three farms supported each other. For example, farmers brought livestock from one unit to arable farms, while others provided tractor rides. Although it was a shame that the weather meant many farms didn’t get the numbers they were expecting, other farms more than doubled their numbers, sometimes by a couple of thousand visitors!”

This year’s campaign highlighted not only the work farmers do in producing our food, but also the work they carry out maintaining the countryside too.

The prominence that the event has now attained was perhaps best illustrated by the fact that Radio 4’s The Archers wove Open Farm Sunday into their storyline in the weeks up to June 12.

Caroline Drummond said: “We’d of course also like to say a big thank you to all our sponsors and supporters for everything they did to help make Open Farm Sunday 2011 such a success. As Open Farm Sunday goes from strength to strength we’d love to hear from anyone interested in sponsoring Open Farm Sunday 2012.”

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The event also received the endorsement or support of supermarket chain Asda, the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, Frontier Agriculture and machinery company John Deere, among a host of others.

Open Farm Sunday was founded to allow people from non-farming and rural backgrounds to have a chance to visit a farm and experience life there. It is hoped by organisers that in doing this they will break down some of the barriers between rural and urban communities and spread awareness of food production.

Earlier this year it published research showing a worrying lack of knowledge about the countryside with 14 per cent of adults in the region shown to not know that a dairy cow is female. It also showed more than half to be unaware that robins live in the UK all year round and that one in five did not know that acorns come from oak trees.

The ongoing success of the event has prompted organisers to confirm that Open Farm Sunday will return in 2012, with Sunday, June 17 confirmed as the date.

Arable demand on the increase

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More than half of arable farmers have ambitions to expand the area they farm over the next two years, it was claimed this week.

A total of 55 per cent of those producing crops surveyed by Barclays Agriculture said that they expected to increase the amount of land they farmed with just three per cent anticipating their land area to decrease,

Martin Redfearn, Head of Agriculture at Barclays, said that the results of the survey showed that demand for farmland remained strong, despite problems in the wider property market.

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