Two new activities for Open Farm Sunday 2012

NEW Pollinator Activities

New for Open Farm Sunday 2012 are two activities which are being supported by a long term sponsor and supporter of Open Farm Sunday – Syngenta, in partnership with researchers from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) and other leading experts.  These are a unique opportunity for people of all ages to discover at first hand the importance of nature to their food in a fun and engaging way.  With the value of insect pollination estimated at £131 billion globally, ‘pollinators’ are very important to farmers and any research that can aid or improve pollination will be of benefit to the whole industry. 

Discover Pollinators

• This is a biological recording activity for visitors to do on their own as they walk round an Open Farm Sunday event 
• Farmers will need to order copies of the ‘Discover Pollinators’ A4 sheet FREE from Open Farm Sunday and make them available to their visitors on arrival at the event 

Visitors are being invited to look out for five insects during their visit to the farm and to let us know whether they have seen them or not.  The insects have been specifically chosen as they are very likely to be seen in June across most of Britain.

Visitors can record whether or not they have seen the insects using the form, and if possible take a photo and upload the photo, farm grid reference and other information onto the CEH (Centre for Ecology and Hydrology) website – which will be easily accessible from www.farmsunday.org. 

It is a simple study but the records become even more valuable when CEH analyse all the results from across the country.  This biological recording will give information on how common these species are and by repeating the study for years to come we can see whether they are declining, remaining stable or increasing.

Pollinator Survey

• This is a national scientific survey for visitors to get involved in
• It will take approximately 15 minutes per person/family to do
• Farmers will need to mark out two specific sites (one crop and one other habitat) for the survey to take place, direct visitors to the survey site, preferably have a couple of volunteers to co-ordinate the survey, and return the completed forms to CEH after the event
• Farmers need to order copies of the ‘Pollinator Survey’ form FREE from Open Farm Sunday

Farmers will need to identify a suitable survey site on the farm where there are two distinct areas adjacent to each other with:
1. ‘crop habitat’ – eg. arable, vegetable, pasture or field with/without animals – mark with red arrows
2. ‘other habitat’ – eg. a hedge, flowering field margin, track with short or tall vegetation or a fallow field – mark with green arrows

Visitors are invited to spend five minutes standing still counting the number of different types of insects visiting flowers in the crop habitat, then another five minutes standing still counting in the ‘other’ habitat.

Farmers/volunteers can opt to input the data on the day and see their data appear real-time on the website, alternatively forward the completed forms to the CEH who will input the data.  Later in the year farmers will be able to download their farm specific data and the UK wide results from the website.

For further information: www.farmsunday.org or Annabel 024 7641 3911 annabel.shackleton@leafuk.org