Farmers Weekly launches #FeedTheNation campaign and initiatives
UK magazine Farmers Weekly has been working with key industry organisations to support farmers across the country with the social campaign #FeedTheNation, which aims to showcase to the public the efforts of farmers that are doing their bit to keep the nation fed during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The #FeedTheNation campaign helps raise awareness by sharing farmers’ views on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook to reassure the public at large that the farming community is doing the best it can to produce safe, affordable and sustainable food to keep the country going.
Farmers Weekly says that the response to its campaign has been both surprising and outstanding, but most of all, the comments have been heart-warming.
Below are just a few examples of the ways in which farmers have been helping the nation stay fed. For more uplifting farming stories, visit: www.fwi.co.uk/feedthenation.
- Despite being classed as very high risk to coronavirus, 86-year-old Devonshire farmer, Alec Burrough, is working every day to keep Britain farming and help #FeedTheNation.
- Manor Farm Fruits, near Hints, Staffordshire, is growing 22ha of strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, gooseberries, redcurrants, blackcurrants and blackberries, and is offering its first-ever “Strawberry Drive-thru”.
- An Essex farming couple are keeping elderly and vulnerable people fed during the coronavirus lockdown – by dusting off their 1963 red vintage Massey tractor and trailer to deliver food to their doorsteps.
- Farm manager Paul Sigley ploughed a huge #FeedTheNation message into a field in north Hampshire. It took about two hours to plan and write the message in the field.
In addition to the social media campaign, there are also a few initiatives under the #FeedTheNation umbrella:
Find your nearest
Farmers Weekly have created online maps to help people find their nearest farm shop, as well as fresh milk direct from farm.
Farmers Army
The Farmers Army initiative was created in the spirit of the 1941 competition published in Farmers Weekly’s Home Section that asked for ideas about how the thousands of women and children evacuated from towns “might be brought into a useful relationship with country and farming life”.
In the 1940’s the Land Army helped win a war through resilience and sheer stubbornness and now 80 years later Farmers Weekly is once again asking the general public to come and help farmers that need domestic seasonal workers to tackle the harvest labour shortage and be able to #FeedTheNation.
Karl Schneider, editor of Farmers Weekly, said: “Britain’s farmers are playing a vital role in this crisis. It falls to all of us to work together to do everything we can to keep our farms – and our nation – going.”
Charity Initiative
Farmers Weekly is now taking the #FeedTheNation campaign a step forward and is asking all media outlets to help and work together to connect farmers that would like to donate part of their harvest with charities such as feeding low income families and NHS workers in cities, towns and villages across the UK.
Charitable initiatives that align with the campaign can help get food from farms to the tables of families in need.
For more information, visit: www.fwi.co.uk/feedthenation and to join the conversation on social media, use the hashtag #FeedTheNation.