On Sun­day 7^th June, farm­ers across the coun­try took to social media for the first ever LEAF Online Farm Sun­day, with thou­sands of con­sumers join­ing them on vir­tu­al tours of their farms, to see and hear direct­ly from the farm­ers them­selves about all they do for the envi­ron­ment and to pro­duce the food we eat. The day marked the planned date of LEAF Open Farm Sun­day, when hun­dreds of farms should have been open­ing their gates for what would have been the 15^th LEAF Open Farm Sun­day. Due to Covid-19 restric­tions, the annu­al cel­e­bra­tion of farm­ing is now sched­uled for Sun­day 20^th September.

Against a back­drop of stun­ning British coun­try­side, con­sumers were invit­ed to join farm­ers from Corn­wall to the Isle of Arran and Northamp­ton­shire to Pem­brokeshire broad­cast­ing live on the LEAF Open Farm Sun­day Face­book page – with a new farmer going live each hour from 8am – 8pm. Just as with LEAF Open Farm Sun­day itself, each vir­tu­al tour was dif­fer­ent and every farm had some­thing spe­cial to offer – it was evi­dent that all who took part have an equal pas­sion for farm­ing, car­ing for the envi­ron­ment, and shar­ing their stories.

Over the course of the day, videos on the LEAF Open Farm Sun­day Face­book page were viewed 85k times – equat­ing to 54 days’ worth (or 77k min­utes!) of video viewed. Con­sumers had the chance to inter­act and ask farm­ers ques­tions, just like they can on LEAF Open Farm Sun­day itself, and many were delight­ed to be able to see farms from parts of the coun­try they would not nor­mal­ly be able to visit. 

The hourly tours includ­ed insights into what crops are used for – includ­ing the unex­pect­ed such as wheat being a con­trib­u­tor to intra­venous drips! What and how cows eat, why good soil is vital to all the crops, how many kilo­me­tres of hedgerows farm­ers have plant­ed and why that mat­ters to the wildlife that live there, as well as the chance to hear sky­larks, see what rape­seed looks like after har­vest­ing, and gen­er­al­ly to under­stand what farm­ers mean when they talk about LEAF’s Inte­grat­ed Farm Man­age­ment, and so much more besides. All videos are still avail­able to watch on the LEAF Open Farm Face­book page.

Activ­i­ty on LEAF’s Open Farm Sun­day social media plat­forms start­ed with a fort­night of teas­er videos with the farm­ers tak­ing part gen­er­at­ing more than ½ mil­lion impres­sions by the time Online Farm Sun­day had fin­ished. LEAF also encour­aged oth­er farms to get involved with many, includ­ing some long-term Open Farm Sun­day hosts, shar­ing their own videos and imagery to social media dur­ing the day, which now acts as a warm up to the on farm event in September. 

Car­o­line Drum­mond, LEAF Chief Exec­u­tive, said: ​“The lev­el of engage­ment with LEAF Online Farm Sun­day real­ly shows how much the pub­lic care about British farm­ing and the inter­est there con­tin­ues to be with the sto­ry behind our food. The day pro­vid­ed peo­ple with a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to ​‘vis­it’ farms and parts of the coun­try they have nev­er been to and would not nor­mal­ly get to vis­it on LEAF Open Farm Sun­day and we’re pleased we were able to mark the day with this event. As so many peo­ple have been con­sum­ing infor­ma­tion and enter­tain­ment online dur­ing lock­down, it was only right that Open Farm Sun­day had an online pres­ence too. 

“I’d like to add my huge thanks to all the farm­ers who took part and to all our spon­sors and sup­port­ers who made yes­ter­day pos­si­ble. We are very much hop­ing to be wel­com­ing peo­ple onto farms on the 20^th Sep­tem­ber this year, but in the mean­time LEAF Online Farm Sun­day has giv­en thou­sands a fan­tas­tic insight into all that British farm­ers do and have con­tin­ued to do, dur­ing these very chal­leng­ing times.”

The full press release can be found here.