LEAF has announced new plans to support farmers who want to open their gates as part of Open Farm Sunday for the first time.

LEAF carried out research over the summer to understand the barriers and challenges faced by farmers who were considering hosting a LEAF Open Farm Sunday event, and the results have been used to create a new programme of support. This includes a new information pack, full of ideas to give farmers a better understanding of how they can take part in LEAF Open Farm Sunday, what is involved and answer frequently asked questions – before farmers take the decision to register an event.

Annabel Shackleton, LEAF Open Farm Sunday Manager explained, “The research highlighted an opportunity to help more farmers at the start of the decision-making process. 95 per cent of experienced hosts found the Host Farmer Handbook invaluable and 91 per cent valued the free resources. However, amongst the farmers surveyed who had never taken part, over half said they would consider hosting a LEAF Open Farm Sunday event but the majority (63 per cent) were not aware of the range of tools and free resources available from LEAF, so this new pack bridges that information gap.”

The pack has been developed ready for the launch of LEAF Open Farm Sunday 2019 on Wednesday 7 November, after which it can be downloaded from the website. Other support planned over the coming months includes a regional network to provide help and advice to host farmers, access to a ticketing service to help farmers control the number of visitors to their event and access to a communications toolkit to provide all the skills and know-how to engage with visitors. The post LEAF Open Farm Sunday announces plans to support new host farmers appeared first on Hort News

Organisers have branded this year’s Open Farm Sunday, held on 7^th June, a record breaking success.

According to organisers LEAF (Linking Environment and Farming), more than a quarter of a million visitors visited one of almost 400 farms which were open across the country. Good weather and pre-event publicity help beat last year’s record visitor figures by around 15 per cent.

Annabel Shackleton, Open Farm Sunday manager at LEAF commented, “Our tenth Open Farm Sunday has been a resounding success and a fantastic celebration of British farming and food. We’re particularly delighted so many families took the time to visit farms up and down the country, many for the first time. On behalf of LEAF I’d like to offer a huge thank you to everyone involved.”

In Lincolnshire, potato grower and produce packer Worth Farms and QV Foods received more than 1,000 visitors. Duncan Worth said, “Open Farm Sunday is a wonderful opportunity for people to get to have a look around working farms such as ours across the country. The numbers of visitors today, all interested to learn more about modern farming and food production, highlights how important this is for our local community too.”

Open Farm Sunday 2016 will be on the 5th June.

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