Background on farm visits and food and agriculture education in Denmark

Farm visits for school children are not a new phenomenon: farmers across Denmark have opened their farms to visitors for decades. Farmers have typically welcomed visitors to their farms, especially students, informally and often without any financial compensation.

Farm visits, however, have become more organized and linked more to the curriculum in the Danish schools in recent years; with more of an educational content relevant for integration into the curriculum in different subjects and at different grade levels in the Danish schools, increasingly with the provision of a financial compensation for the farmer’s time. Apart from some teachers’

own collection of educational resources especially from the internet and various knowledge centres for learning materials, two of the key food and agriculture interest organizations in Denmark have developed and distributed their own educational materials to be used in connection with a farm visit. They have been developed to be used before, during and after the farm visit to ensure optimal learning and academic relevance.

The two key players in promoting and supporting farm visits amongst schools are the Danish Agriculture and Food Council (DAFC) and the Organics Denmark (OD), both interest organizations of farmers and food industries. This chapter will present the results from interviews and observations with farmers, teachers and representatives from DAFC, OD and the producers’

association for organic schoolyards. The main focus is on presenting the four cases and findings related to the collaboration arrangements in each case. Secondly the motivation of respectively the farmers, teachers and interest organizations for engaging in farm visits and food and agriculture education will be presented. At the end of the chapter, the main challenges and opportunities for farm-school collaboration identified by the stakeholders will be presented and discussed.

The Danish Agriculture and Food Council (DAFC)

DAFC, an interest organisation representing farming and food industries of Denmark including businesses, trade and farmers’ associations, was established in 2009 after a consolidation of the former Danish Food and Agriculture Council, Danish Slaughterhouses, Danish Pork Producers, Danish Poultry Producers, Danish Agriculture (including Danish Agriculture Media, Danish

63

Agricultural Extension) and others including parts of the Dairy Association.^v Prior to the merger in 2009, these different organizations had their own staff and sector-oriented educational materials.

Some of these educational materials are still found in schools and available through DAFC.

After the consolidation, the former educational units of the different organizations were reduced to only one service with three full-time employees in DAFC. Since then, several new, printed and on-line educational materials have been developed in collaboration with educational experts, which increasingly but not entirely move beyond the past sector-oriented focus. Yet, the school service does still have materials e.g. focusing on cows/milk production and pigs/pork production, i.e. a sector orientation. The new materials include hands-on activities and are adapted to different grade levels, with didactic considerations and links to the educational goals defined by the Ministry of Children and Education for subjects like science, mathematics and Danish.

DAFC supports farmers in opening up their farms to visitors from schools by compensating each farmer with 500 DKR (nearly EUR 70) per visit, as a compensation for the farmer’s time.

In the past three schools years, approximately 12,000 students were registered to have visited Danish farm. Being only half way into the school year 2013/14 and already 9795 students, it is likely that the number will increase beyond the 12,000 students. An unknown percentage of farm visits, however, are unregistered: some are done informally without payment or connection to the DAFC. DAFC has approximately 350 participating farmers across Denmark, about 215 are part of an educational program with materials developed by the DAFC’s program called The Class in the Stable (in Danish “Klassen i Stalden”), which includes on-farm posters and workstations that can be used during the farm visit to make the farm visit more interactive, student-driven, investigative and less of a tour around the farm. Different investigations by the students themselves and practical excercises targetting both knowledge about the farm and agriculture as well as excersise to integrate math, Danish, science, biology and other subjects, are part of the activities.

Table 7: Number of schoolchildren visiting farms in Denmark

School year Number of students visiting farms

2010/2011 12.888

2011/2012 12.017

2012/2013 12.199

2013/2014 9.795^vi

Source: DAFC

64

As the figure 5 shows, there are notable regional differences when it comes to registered farm visits, which is based on registered financial compensation to farmers. According to DAFC, farmers on Sealand close to the capital area are keen to get the financial compensation for their work, whereas it is presumed that there is a large number of unregistered farm visits in rural areas located far from city centres, e.g. in Northern Jutland and Funen, due to the fact that farmers take in classes for free.

Figure 3: Total number of registered farm visits in Denmark. DAFC, 2011-2012

Northern Jutland

9% Mid and West 16%

Easter Jutland 12%

Southwestern Jutland

5%

Southeastern Jutland

4%

Southern Jutland 3%

Funen 1%

Eastern islands incl. Copenhagen

50%

Bornholm 0%

65

Photo 3: Map of DAFC school farms in Denmark. Source: http://skole.lf.dk/Book.aspx

According to DAFC staff and the map above^vii, farmers in Northern and Western Jutland are especially active but do not frequently register the visits or expect a financial compensation. A possible explanation for these trends is that there are a greater number of urban schools inquiring about farm visits in the capital area and have access to public transport to get to the farm, for which reason farmers can actually make an additional income. In more remote areas of the country, the visits are more sporadic due to public transport limitations and farmers might therefore not count the fee as any notable income. Hiring a private bus is generally too expensive. Furthermore, many farmers here view taking in school classes as a moral obligation very dear to their heart, according to the staff working with farmers on DAFC’s school program. These regional differences are well illustrated in figure 5 showing that the majority of registered farm visits are in the Eastern island region (Sealand and other islands) located close to the capital of Copenhagen, although most farms are found in Northern and Western Jutland. Eastern Jutland with the 15% of all visits, just like the Eastern Islands and Capital with 46% of all registered visits, is located close to urban centres.

The farms available for visits include pig, cattle, dairy, mink and other production types as well as both conventional and organic farms. The DAFC website also includes links to a smaller number of processing companies including dairies, slaughterhouses and others that offer tours to their production sites. These were, however, not investigated, as none of the teachers mentioned going to a processing company.

66

Organics Denmark (OD) and the Producers’ Association for Organic Schoolyards

OD, representing organic farmers, businesses and consumers, initiated a program for visits to organic farms across Denmark. This included the development of educational resources to be used in connection with the farm visits. Since late 2010, however, OD has stopped funding the Organic Schoolyard program, which is now run by an organic producers’ association. The Organic Schoolyard program of the producers’ association is part of a program called Organics in the School. This includes farm visits, educational materials on organic food and organic school food (see: okologiiskolen.dk) There are currently 35 so-called ‘organic schoolyards’ in the producers’

association in 2013 up from 30 in 2011. Since OD stopped fundig this intiative, the Producers’

Association for Organic Schoolyards¹² has taken over the responsbility for e.g. seeking funding. All the participating organic farmers are, however, still members of OD.

Organic schoolyards are organic farms that take in classes for farm visits. The producers’

association for Organic Schoolyards was initiated after a pilot project in 2010. The project was initially a collaboration between the association and Coop Denmark ^viii to spread awareness of ecology and organic farming amongst children and youth through Organic Schoolyards. In 2010, funds were available through Coop Denmark to reimburse the then 30 farms participating for their time. In connection with this initiative, it was decided to initiate a pilot project called Organic Network Eastern Jutland, where local farmers participated in the Organic Schoolyard initiative as well as local shops, elected local Coop representatives and teachers in local schools. The goal of the pilot project was to strengthen the local Coop shop councils and enhance the academic output from school visits to farms. One of the overarching objectives of this collaboration was to foster a ‘sense of coherence’ between the different stakeholders, to reconnect them to the local area, which many people are becoming more and more detached from. (Ruge 2012)

Additional funds provided from local Coop shops were designated for materials in the classroom such as food and presentation materials as part of the thematic projects on organic food and farming. The funding neither for these materials nor for the Organic Schoolyards was permanent and the funding from Coop Denmark ended in 2011. From the beginning of 2012, the project has been transferred to the producers’ association, who applies for continued funding for the activities.

According to the head of the association, some funds were left from 2011 due to unspent funds, because the interest and knowledge about farm visits by teachers is still limited and transport time and costs to some farms are limiting factors.

Thus, unlike the DAFC farm visits, the funding for compensating farmers for their time, is not permanent but based on short-term funds available through various sources. For this reason, the number of visiting students vary from year to year depending on the availability of funds as illustrated in table 8. Apart from collaboration on funding, the Organic Schoolyard farmers (organized in the producers’ association) meet to exchange experiences.

12 From now on either referred to as organic producers’ association or Producers’ Association for Organic Schoolyards.

67

Table 8: Number of schoolchildren visiting organic farms in Denmark

Year Number of schoolchildren visiting farms

2010 2000

2011 3075

2012 3500

Source: OD. (Ministeriet for fødevarer, landbrug og fiskeri 2011, Ruge, Økologisk Landsforening 2011)(Producers’ association for Organic Schoolyards, 2012).

Like the DAFC, the Organics in the School Program (under which the Organic Schoolyards program is placed) has a wide range of educational materials, including written materials, worksheets and movies available on-line, which can be used before, during and after the farm visit.

Many of the educational materials were developed in 2008 in collaboration with an educational expert and have been developed to meet the needs of students at different grade levels, with didactic considerations and links to the educational goals for subjects like science, mathematics and Danish by the Ministry of Children and Education. Recently, the educational materials for 6^th to 10^th grades were updated to include topics related to nature on organic farms and materials and exercises that can be connected to QR codes on the students’ smartphones.

Prior to the pilot project starting in 2010, a systematic review of experiences by farmers and teachers of farm visits was conducted (Breiting, Ruge 2006). The report concluded that there was a need for more academic content and relevance of the farm visits to get more teachers to take time out of a busy schedule to go on a farm visit. In order to achieve this objective of increasing the academic content and relevance, it was recommended that teachers work with agriculture and food production before and after the farm visit. (Breiting, Ruge 2006) In connection with the report on farmers’ and teachers’ experiences with farm visits, the online step-by-step and grade adapted educational materials were developed. DAFC’s educational materials are also based on the importance of integrating the field visit in the teaching back in the classroom before and after.

Currently, there is limited documentation and research on farm-school collaboration in Denmark as well as the integration of farm visits in the curriculum. The aforementioned data on registered farm visits was collected for the first time for the school year 2010-2011 by both the DAFC and the OD (later the producers’ association), for which reason there is no data available prior to 2010 for comparisons. This is partly due to the fact that much of the work on farm visits by DAFC prior to 2010 was more decentralized and that there was no focus on or need for gathering data to document the extent of farm visits in Denmark in the past.

68