Public have no idea about farmers' environmental work, survey says

The survey, by farming charity LEAF, sug­gests that peo­ple aren't very familiar with farmers' environmental work
The survey, by farming charity LEAF, sug­gests that peo­ple aren't very familiar with farmers' environmental work

The majority of Britons think that while the work that farmers do is important, they have no knowledge of what they actually do for the environment, a new survey shows.

Nearly all those surveyed (94%) agreed on the importance of farmers' work, but only 12% claimed to be well informed about what they do for the countryside.

The study found that the majority (71%) of Britons had no idea that farm­ers are respon­si­ble for look­ing after almost three quar­ters of the countryside.

Com­mis­sioned by farm­ing char­i­ty LEAF, organ­is­er of Open Farm Sun­day which took place on 9 June, it sug­gested that peo­ple weren't familiar with farmers' environmental work.

Just over a third said they didn't know that farm­ers plant and main­tain hedgerows and wood­land, while 62% had no idea they plant and man­age wild­flow­ers.

Most (69%) didn't know they cre­ate ponds for wildlife, and over three quar­ters (79%) said they didn't know farmers cre­ate habi­tats for bee­tles, feed birds (77%), and install bird and bat box­es (72%).

And just over half (57 percent) of people said they had no idea that farm­ers main­tain foot­paths, the research found.

However, it found that there was some appetite to learn, with four out of 10 report­ing that they want to learn more about the work farm­ers do.

Nearly half of those surveyed said they want to see more food labels indi­cat­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty of prod­ucts and 26% said they are more wor­ried about sustainable food pro­duc­tion than price.

And just under half (45%) said they bought British when pos­si­ble, while 40% said they look care­ful­ly at food labels.

Responding to the survey's findings, Annabel Shack­le­ton, LEAF’s Open Farm Sun­day man­ag­er, said farmers were often 'unsung heroes'.

“Farm­ers real­ly are the guardians of the earth, who go to great lengths to pro­tect the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment around them whilst pro­duc­ing nutri­tious food for us all to enjoy.

“Farm­ing with nature is a vital bat­tle­ground on which our heroes live, thrive and some­times strug­gle?—?there are chal­lenges we don’t see, threats that are ongo­ing, vic­to­ries that aren’t recognised."