A new educational partnership has been agreed to deliver food and farming information to children.
The Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) has agreed the new education strategy with the British Nutrition Foundation (BNF).
The new approach, which launches in April 2018, will see AHDB move away from being a ‘delivery arm’ for education and towards becoming a knowledge hub for food and farming education information.
It will focus on a higher strategic level of delivery for education.
The new approach will also look to address industry gaps where AHDB can add value in education while allowing for better collaboration with education partners.
It comes as news that a survey conducted a few weeks ago by the BNF revealed some serious misconceptions children have about food.
According to the research by the BNF, which spoke to more than 27,500 children across the UK, cheese comes from plants, tomatoes grow underground and fish fingers are made of chicken.
The BNF survey isn't the only worrying picture that shows children's serious misconceptions about food. A recent survey by Cadbury's has revealed that a third of children are not aware that milk comes from cows, and two fifths think cows drink milk rather than produce it.
'Trusted and positive'
AHDB’s Senior Education Team Manager Diane Symes said: “Our new partnership approach with BNF will enable us to build AHDB’s reputation in education by providing trusted, quality assured food and farming information.
“It gives us a clear platform to inform tomorrow’s consumers about food and farming through the lens of nutrition and a healthy, balanced diet.
“We will further support this approach through teacher training and, to ensure AHDB continues to build credibility and trust, we will help set new standards through developing and introducing recognised quality assurance for food and farming based resources and programmes.”
In addition, the strategy wants to help further build a 'trusted and positive' image of UK agriculture.
Events like Open Farm Sunday will be further promoted. This year, initial estimates indicate that over 250,000 people spent the day at one of the 358 farms across the country that hosted an event.
