Year of Food and Farming

Launched on September 12th 2007 by its Patron, His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales, The Year of Food and Farming is a campaign to reconnect children with the countryside and teach them where their food comes from. This initiative “aims to promote healthy living by offering young people direct experience of the countryside, farming and food” and hopes to transform our relationship with food. Many people have become disengaged and disinterested in what they eat - an attitude which simply must be changed.

The Academy of Culinary Arts fully supports the Year of Food and Farming and will be using their resources and contacts from Chefs Adopt a School and the Mutton Renaissance to help teach children more about the journey from farm to fork.

Everyone involved with Chefs Adopt a School knows how exciting preparing your own food can be and children up and down the country agree. Over 50% of children would like to prepare or cook their own food and over a third would be keen to grow their own food. The Year of Food and Farming aims to ensure children…

• find out how food is grown and produced
• explore why food and how we produce food is so important
• are able to make informed choices about healthy eating and diet
• discover what happens on a working farm
• experience the countryside and all it can offer
• learn from materials developed by farmers and food producers

As with Chefs Adopt a School, the Year of Food and Farming links up really well with several different subjects in the National Curriculum, like PSHE, Science, Design and Technology and Geography and will prove invaluable for schools aiming for the healthy school status. As well as all this, the Year of Food and Farming supports the Learning outside the classroom manifesto.

The Year of Food and Farming will provide lots of exciting learning opportunities and deliver an important message that children will connect with and above all, enjoy.

The Year of Food and Farming website - www.yearoffoodandfarming.org.uk - is a wealthy resource of all the activities around the country in which you can participate. The important thing is to get out there and enjoy the year, and at the same time expose children to some amazing learning opportunities.

At the Academy of Culinary Arts and the Chefs Adopt a School Trust we are very excited about the Year of Food and Farming. We are going to make sure that it is a great success; but this is not about just one year, this is about changing food cultures - forever!

Have a great Year of Food and Farming!