Farmers in England are being urged to apply for funding to ‘educate’ children about where their food comes from.

As part of the Countryside Stewardship scheme, which reopened in February, farmers can receive  financial incentives to look after the environment. Qualifying acts range from flood mitigation, organic conversion, to hedgerow planting and much more. Under this scheme, participants can apply for almost £8,000 per year to allow children to visit their farms for educational purposes; farmers will be given £309 per farm visit and can host up to 25 visits per year.

The Country Trust – an educational charity – encourages both animal farmers and crop growers to apply for the funding whilst it is available.

Jill Attenborough, the CEO of Country Trust, has stated, “This is an opportunity to give children the opportunity to discover where their food comes from and why it matters.”

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This is yet another way that children are being shown the ‘friendly’ and ‘kind’ side of animal farming, and not the tragic reality. The industrialised commodification of animals is not going to be shown to these children. In fact, they will likely be shown a cute lamb or calf or even a herd of cows in a field. It begs the question: Will they be taking children to the slaughterhouse too? Or inside a broiler shed filled with 50,000 suffering birds?

Educating children on the production of crops is a wonderful idea; kids should be more connected to where our food comes from. But they should not be shown a glamourised, false vision of what animal agriculture really is. Especially at the expense of the taxpayer.

We hope that visiting farms and making connections with animals, even under false or contrived settings, will show children that animals are individuals who have rights and should be given the respect they deserve. These early relationships with animals are usually key with many people who go vegan later in life. We sincerely hope that this scheme backfires and these young people will leave animal products off their plates.

As always,

For the animals.

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