Farm­ers across Britain are cel­e­brat­ing the suc­cess of the 18^th anniver­sary Open Farm Sun­day (OFS), the industry’s annu­al open day which took place on Sun­day 9^th June. Man­aged by LEAF (Link­ing Envi­ron­ment And Farm­ing) since it began in 2006, the day brought togeth­er the whole food and farm­ing indus­try to put farm­ing cen­tre stage.

Annabel Shack­le­ton, OFS Man­ag­er, express­es her thanks to every­one who opened their gates and opened vis­i­tors’ minds to the incred­i­ble sto­ry behind the jour­ney our food takes from field to fork:

“It has been a tru­ly tremen­dous cel­e­bra­tion of the hard work that farming’s Guardians of the Earth do day in day out to farm sus­tain­ably in har­mo­ny with nature. The feed­back we’ve received has been phenomenal.”

More than 225 Open Farm Sun­day events took place on farms of all types and sizes across Britain, from Jer­sey to Shet­land. Wide­spread pro­mo­tion on broad­cast media, includ­ing on BBC Radio 2, and over 40 local and region­al radio sta­tions, high­light­ed the work farm­ers do as Guardians of the Earth and encour­aged vis­i­tors to dis­cov­er the farm­ing sto­ries on their doorstep, as well as show­cas­ing the sec­tor to attract new entrants. 

New research com­mis­sioned by LEAF ahead of Open Farm Sun­day 2024* indi­cates that while most Britons (94%) think the work that farm­ers do is impor­tant, sad­ly only 12% of the nation claim to be well informed about what farm­ers do for the countryside. 

“Our sur­vey find­ings demon­strate why an event like Open Farm Sun­day is so impor­tant to our indus­try and in con­tribut­ing to the wider edu­ca­tion of local com­mu­ni­ties,” adds Mrs Shackleton.

“Peo­ple have a healthy appetite to learn more about what farm­ers do in terms of land man­age­ment, nature pro­tec­tion, envi­ron­men­tal stew­ard­ship and food pro­duc­tion. The most pow­er­ful voic­es to share their knowl­edge and expe­ri­ences are those of farm­ers them­selves and this year’s OFS activ­i­ties have proved just that.” 

LEAF extends its thanks to all our Open Farm Sun­day prin­ci­pal spon­sors, all the farm­ers, vol­un­teers and wider indus­try con­tacts who helped host events across Britain, as well as the hun­dreds of thou­sands of vis­i­tors who attend­ed. Next year’s Open Farm Sun­day will take place on 8^th June 2025.

For the full press release.