Open Farm Sun­day, man­aged by LEAF (Link­ing Envi­ron­ment And Farm­ing) is the farm­ing industry’s annu­al open day where the pub­lic can find out how their food is pro­duced and the work farm­ers do to man­age the coun­try­side. Since 2006, over 1,000 farm­ers across the UK have opened their gates and wel­comed over 1.5M peo­ple onto farms across the UK. The activ­i­ties fund­ed by BBSRC focus on egg pro­duc­tion and soils, as well as ​‘whole farm’ sci­ence to enable vis­i­tors to under­stand the impor­tance of farm­ing with­in the con­text of food secu­ri­ty and raise aware­ness of how UK bio­science under­pins the agri­cul­tur­al industry.

Dr Patrick Mid­dle­ton, Head of Engage­ment at BBSRC, said: ​“LEAF’s Open Farm Sun­day is such a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to engage peo­ple with the rel­e­vance of research to farm­ing and, ulti­mate­ly, the food on our plates. ”

Annabel Shack­le­ton, Man­ag­er of LEAF’s Open Farm Sun­day, said: ​“Con­nect­ing peo­ple with their food, where it comes from and how it’s grown is a fun­da­men­tal part of deliv­er­ing more sus­tain­able food and farm­ing. The more we under­stand about our food and how it is pro­duced, the more we come to val­ue it and the work farm­ers do. LEAF’s Open Farm Sun­day enables peo­ple to dis­cov­er the world of farm­ing first hand. We are delight­ed to be work­ing togeth­er with BBSRC to bring vis­i­tors a range of excit­ing new hands-on activ­i­ties which will cap­ti­vate, engage and inform peo­ple about the sci­ence behind farm­ing and how sci­ence is help­ing farm­ers to meet the chal­lenges of cli­mate change, a grow­ing glob­al pop­u­la­tion and ris­ing health issues in inno­v­a­tive and sus­tain­able ways.”

Fund­ed projects:

Improv­ing soil to improve our food — Pro­fes­sor Dun­can Cameron, Uni­ver­si­ty of Sheffield

A root-view­ing based activ­i­ty to high­light to a fam­i­ly audi­ence the impor­tance of main­tain­ing healthy soil for our crops and livestock.

Where’s the sci­ence in that? — Dr Simon Grif­fiths, John Innes Centre

An activ­i­ty to encour­age vis­i­tors to learn about the sci­ence involved in the arable year. 

Cute eggs - Dr Ian Dunn, Roslin Institute

An activ­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate the impor­tance of the invis­i­ble pro­tein cuti­cle that sur­rounds an egg in pro­tect­ing it from harm­ful bacteria.

All reg­is­tered Open Farm Sun­day host farm­ers will be able to gain free access to these new sci­ence based resources, togeth­er with a wide range of oth­er resources when they reg­is­ter to host an Open Farm Sun­day event on the 5^th June 2016.

To view the new Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy pages click here.