When it comes to under­stand­ing what mod­ern farm­ing deliv­ers, most of us are unaware of just how vital an indus­try it is and how much it con­tributes to our day to day lives. A new sur­vey released today reveals that most peo­ple do not know that many British crops are used for much more than food, or appre­ci­ate the val­ue or scale of farming.

Farm­ers have a sig­nif­i­cant role in the pro­duc­tion of many com­mon­place items we use all the time, from fuel to med­i­cine and clothes to paper and much more besides. Two thirds of those ques­tioned though were unaware farm­ers grow crops for essen­tials like med­i­cine (65%), cos­met­ics (67%), rope (62%) or paper (66%). 

Although knowl­edge of more tra­di­tion­al crops such as wheat (88%), pota­toes (79%) and bar­ley (74%) was rea­son­ably high, knowl­edge of the diverse range of crops British farm­ers grow was not. Just one in ten peo­ple (10%) knew oilseed rape could be used in motor fuel, despite this crop cov­er­ing 675,000 hectares across the UK. Just 4% of peo­ple sur­veyed knew that hemp could be used in print­ing ink. Only one in ten peo­ple iden­ti­fied sea buck­thorn as a crop grown on a com­mer­cial scale, and just one in 20 knew the same was true for mis­cant­hus. Near­ly one in four peo­ple (23%) did know though that farm­ers grow bor­age, which is used for many dietary sup­ple­ments and ointments. 

Farm­ing is a huge­ly impor­tant part of our econ­o­my, yet less than one in 10 peo­ple cor­rect­ly knew that it con­tributes £10bn (0.6%) to the UK econ­o­my each year.* In fact, 15% of peo­ple thought it was just £10m or less. Just 6% of peo­ple ques­tioned cor­rect­ly iden­ti­fied that there are approx­i­mate­ly 200,000 farms in the UK**, with 64% believ­ing it was few­er than this. Like­wise, just one in 20 con­sumers recog­nised that close to three quar­ters of total UK land area is used for agri­cul­ture** — the equiv­a­lent size of over 17million inter­na­tion­al rug­by pitches. 

Less than half of those ques­tioned (47%) realised that farm­ers care for and man­age the coun­try­side, although 55% said it was impor­tant we farm sustainably. 

More than a third of farm­ers are using wind, solar and ener­gy crops to pro­duce low-car­bon ener­gy* but 90% of con­sumers were either unaware of this or believed the fig­ure to be low­er. Just one in five con­sumers were aware that farm­ers can play a part in elec­tric­i­ty pro­duc­tion. A quar­ter of UK pow­er comes from renew­able sources but again, con­sumers did not realise this or make a link to agriculture.

This lack of knowl­edge is not helped by many people’s dis­con­nect with farm­ing. The sur­vey, which was car­ried out by LEAF (Link­ing Envi­ron­ment And Farm­ing), the organ­is­ers of next weekend’s Open Farm Sun­day (5^th June), revealed that, on aver­age, those ques­tioned had not vis­it­ed a work­ing farm in over nine years. A quar­ter of those ques­tioned (26%) said they had nev­er vis­it­ed a farm. 

Open Farm Sun­day events will show con­sumers the diver­si­ty of mod­ern farm­ing and the work farm­ers do to farm sus­tain­ably. Annabel Shack­le­ton, Open Farm Sun­day Man­ag­er at LEAF said: ​“Peo­ple may not realise it but our lives depend on farm­ers for much more than just nutri­tious and deli­cious food. That is why we are call­ing on as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble to vis­it a farm on the 5^th June for Open Farm Sun­day and dis­cov­er the world of farm­ing for them­selves. The major­i­ty of peo­ple we sur­veyed said that there is a lot to thank farm­ers for, but it seems they don’t realise just exact­ly how much.” 

For more infor­ma­tion on Open Farm Sun­day and to find par­tic­i­pat­ing farms vis­it www​.farm​sun​day​.org. A new video has been pro­duced by LEAF to show con­sumers how farm­ing impacts their every­day lives: https://​youtu​.be/​0​T​Z​H​V​c​Hcv7A

Five British crops and some of their applications:

1. Hemp: Used in cos­met­ics, rope, print­ing ink and the build­ing and auto­mo­tive industries 

2. Sea Buck­thorn: Used in cos­met­ics and nutri­tion­al supplements 

3. Bor­age: Used in skin care creams, cos­met­ics and medicine 

4. Mis­cant­hus: Used in heat and pow­er gen­er­a­tion

5. Oilseed Rape: Used in motor fuel and lubricants

For the full press release click here.