Showers don’t deter Open Farm Weekend crowds

Despite some bad weather, the UFU’s Open Farm Weekend initiative enjoyed a fantastic turnout recently with nearly 10,000 people visiting real, working farms to learn more about farming and local food. The event, now in its second year, saw a large increase in participating farms and an even larger increase in people visiting a farm, many for the first time on the weekend of the 15^th and 16^th of June.

Morrow Communications ran an integrated communications campaign for the project involving media relations, social media management and advertising across TV, radio, online and local press titles. The campaign ran in two distinct phases - the first targeting the agri-sector to encourage participation in the event from potential host farmers and young farmers and the second to drive awareness and understanding of the event with the consumer, which ran just ahead of the main event. Morrow were also tasked with managing the project’s online presence and providing on-farm teaching aids to help relate the “field to fork” message to farm visitors.

The OFW team at Morrows were delighted to see attendance figures this year soaring far beyond those of Open Farm Weekend 2012 - in total 9,690 people visited participating farms this year - an almost 100% improvement on 2012 figures. 

Barclay Bell, Deputy President of Ulster Farmers’ Union said, “The weather conditions were certainly challenging for some of our farmers on the Saturday. But I was delighted to see first-hand that this didn’t deter the people of Northern Ireland from coming out in their thousands to make the most of Open Farm Weekend!”

The 2013 initiative saw 19 real working farms opening their gates to the public to learn more about where their food comes from and to get a “behind the scenes” look at a real, working farm. Each event was as unique as the farmer, with some providing fascinating guided tours and others hosting eating challenges, barbecues, games and petting zoos. 

Open Farm Weekend is a project by Ulster Farmers’ Union and is supported by The Department of Agriculture’s Regional Food Programme and Business in the Community NI, on behalf of The Prince’s Countryside Fund and is sponsored by Bank of Ireland UK and NFU Mutual.