The Royal Highland Education Trust has raised its profile in recent years with more and more youngsters coming on to farms to learn about food production.
David Andrews caught up with RHET manager Alison Motion to ask her more about the organisation.
Q What exactly does RHET do?
A RHET helps engage children so that they know about farming and specifically where food comes from.
Q What age groups are you working with?
A From three years old up to 18 years but they have to be five years old before they can go out on to a farm.
Q How do you manage to cover the whole of Scotland?
A We have five people based at our headquarters at Ingliston in Edinburgh and there are 12 area coordinators who work from their own homes plus about 600 farmers all across the country.
Q How is RHET funded?
A First of all the Royal Highland and Agricultural Society picks up the costs of the headquarters staff and then we have a large number of other funding bodies including the Scottish Government, Scottish Natural Heritage, the National Farmers Union Mutual Insurance Society and the Scottish Association of Young Farmers Clubs.
RHET was the young farmers’ charity of the year last year. We also receive funding from a number of trusts including DC Thomson and increasingly from a number of businesses linked to farming such as supermarkets, meat processors and maltsters.
They see the value in the work we are doing. Also each area has to do its own fundraising.
Beyond the money we raise, we estimate that volunteers put in the equivalent of £170,000 of work every year.
Q You mentioned the Highland Society and that you are part of that organisation.
A Yes we are the educational arm. The first point on the RHASS charter is “to educate about agriculture.”
Q You are now encouraging youngsters out on to farms. How successful has that been?
A Including farm visits, classroom speeches where farmers go and talk to pupils and the Highland Show, it was about 67,000 last year.
Q What percentage of Scotland’s youngsters is that?
A About one in eight of all those between five to 14 years old.
Q Where do you go from there?
A We have a target of one in four youngsters by 2020. It was one in 40 in 2005 and now it is one in eight now we need a doubling in the next eight years.
Q The Scottish Government has been very supportive of the work of RHET.
A Yes indeed it is now part of their food policy.
Q What is the purpose of all this? Some might say farmers produce food, so what?
A A few years ago, there was a gap between people eating food and not knowing where it came from. As a result people were not too choosy about what they ate. For example, they did not know all of the husbandry that went into producing beef.
Then farmers decided they wanted to let people know what goes on in farming in Scotland. The end point is we hope people will buy more Scottish produce and they will choose carefully what they eat.
Q Are you beginning to see a difference?
A Yes but it will be a long haul. RHET is a teenager now and we are beginning to make a difference. For example one of our aims was to get it on to the school curriculum.
Q Have you not just done the easy bit with rural schools visiting neighbouring farms and not reached into city centre schools?
A One of the big problems with arranging farm visits for city centre schools is the cost of transport but we are now dealing with that issue. I would add that rural schools do not necessary know about food. They may be able to recognise a cow but they may not have a wider knowledge about how food is produced.
Q You are not yourself from a farming background. What have you found out about farming you did not know?
A I have had a huge number of surprises along the way. One early one was seeing carrots in a field in May. They had all been protected from the winter under a layer of straw and black plastic. They were being lifted ready to go on to supermarket shelves within 24 hours. That was a revelation as I had grown carrots myself but had not seen anything like that.
Q What qualifications do you have for your job?
A I am a qualified teacher and am very interested in outdoor learning. I also have a training qualification. My previous work included raising cash for the organisation with whom I worked.
Q Youngsters see things with different eyes. What has surprise you on farm visits?
A Sometimes it can be something as simple as a cow having to calf before being able to give milk. It is a fairly basic concept but often that has not got through. It is often only once you explain it is the same as a baby being fed by its mother.
With older students we sometimes get asked about artificial insemination. If the teacher is OK with that the farmer can tell the class exactly that it involves. It is all a matter of fact.
We do not flinch from telling youngsters the connection between the animals they see and the food they eat so that they make the connection between the cow and the burger.
Q Is it safe taking the general public on to working farms where there are big machinery and potential disease risks?
A We have a very robust health and safety system. There are some things you cannot do when children are on farms. We work out a route with the farmer as to where we can go and what we can do.
Because teachers are not expert, we carry out risk assessments on the farm for the age group and we do that before they come out.
Hygiene is very important with hand washes when they come out and before they go back to school they wash their hands again and it is a proper wash.
There is no sticking your hands under the tap and then running away.