Sam on the Farm: Swapping Cheshire for New Zealand

Last year I was awarded the John Platt Travel Scholarship from Reaseheath College and the Cheshire Agricultural Society. It’s a travel grant that enables a young person from Cheshire to go and study an agricultural topic of their choice anywhere in the world. I decided I wanted to go to New Zealand to study farm diversification and Agri-tourism and look at how the farmers over there are engaging with the general public. In the UK as farmers, I passionately believe that we need to be better at showing people what we do, and I wanted to investigate how they achieved this in a country like New Zealand, where farming is like the UK but on a bigger scale. So, in January, I headed out there to visit numerous farms in the North and South islands over a space of 3 weeks, just to see how it’s all done over there but also to find new ideas too.

As you can see from the video, it was a very special trip indeed…

Written by Sam Walton