Opinion: Full marks for ‘educational access’ option
© Adobe Stock Image How would you like to earn more than £180 an hour without having to leave the farm, learn a new subject or even put on a collar and tie?
Don’t worry, this isn’t the latest pyramid selling scheme – I am talking, of course, of Countryside Stewardship and the “Educational Access” option (code ED1 if you’re keeping up at the back).
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Even the most tongue-tied farmer can achieve a reasonable level of eloquence if they are passionate about their business, and safe in the knowledge that they are on home turf.
It can be very refreshing to see your farm through the eyes of others, and uplifting to appreciate what you’ve got.
It can also be quite entertaining. Schoolchildren can ask the most random questions and you can often have a bit of a laugh together sorting out the answer.
I leave it up to you how to explain why the cow is giving the bull a piggyback…
Animals – whether livestock, wildlife or the farm collie – are a definite bonus.
Crops can require a bit more ingenuity. Trying to explain Zadok’s decimal growth stages of cereals to a class of eight-year-olds is always going to be a hard sell.
But once you get them doing stuff, grinding wheat, squashing rapeseed (I even had them beating oats with hammers once) you’re onto a winner.
And if you’ve got crops then you’re likely to have some cool-looking machinery.
Hopefully most of us have also got some worms living in our soil, and digging holes can be a surprisingly popular activity.
Occasionally you get the school kid with an agenda, possibly suffering from a hint of parental indoctrination, who might bring up the joys of veganism or concerns about methane, but 10 minutes watching calves skipping round the fields is usually enough to sort that one out.
The rules of ED1 are very simple: the attendees must be under 18, be following an approved educational curriculum, and you cannot claim for more than 25 visits a year.
Visits have to last at least two hours and there is no minimum group size. Really.
I had to check because we had a few home-educated children visit last year and, as long as they’re following an Ofsted-approved agenda, apparently even a party of one (plus parent) is fine.
I made my own kids join us on that tour to make it feel a bit less odd.
For giving up your time and showing them round, you get a pretty generous £363 per visit.
Living a mile from Devon’s last agricultural college, I thought it worth investing in a people-carrier trailer.
A tractor-and-trailer ride is always fun, and it means you can get right into a herd of cattle without worrying about your visitors getting trampled.
It also means you can see a lot more in your allotted two hours and not exhaust your guests with a route march.
We can even pick them up if their school is nearby, which makes the logistics a lot simpler.
So, for something different, ED1 offers a break from the routine, a bit of entertainment and – dare I suggest it – a chance to show off your farm and do a bit of PR.
There’s also probably no clearer demonstration of “public money for public goods” than by adding Educational Access to your options list.