Thought y'all might get a kick out of this. Jack

OXFORD, England (Reuters) - UK farmers are ugly, old, sweaty, hairy, rugged and scruffy. They wear dungarees and flat caps, have straw in their mouths and clutch pitchforks. That's what many children in Britain think.

Many seven-year-olds also have a bleak view of the countryside where farmers work, saying it is muddy, full of cow dung and boring.

The results of a study into the impressions of 500 children were presented to a conference hall full of suited and cleanly shaven farmers Friday as a sign that many in Britain had little clue about farming.

Some children were not sure what a partridge looked like or where margarine came from, while most in a town thought farmers had no need for computers. Farmers just killed foxes and rabbits and sprayed crops with pesticides.

"The negative images were very strong...And all the children had the same image of a farmer, a very stereotypical one," said Liza Dibble from the Countryside Foundation for Education after conducting the research in schools in Swindon and rural Gloucestershire.

-- jack (atl.jack@mailexcite.com), January 05, 2001

Answers

I guess we're not the only country with uneducated kids. It is interesting to me to watch 'Castaway' on BBC America, in which people were vieing and jockeying to see who would be chosen to go to an island in the Outer Hebrides that even the local farm community had abandoned to live for 15 months in huts they would construct, raising their own food, butchering their own livestock. So not everyone has a stereotypical view I guess -- a lot of them were ad execs, business women, etc. They all wanted to go rather badly and were unhappy that they only selected a couple dozen to go.

Locally, I have convinced people that pencils grow on pencil bushes with the lead already in them, and had to answer questions on 'how do birds get born'(to adults!!), and informed people that those darling little 'birds' they heard singing were spring peepers - frogs. Sad, really. But then I couldn't tell them what the trade-name colours were for Bennetton either. (I can't even spell their name!)

-- Julie Froelich (firefly1@nnex.net), January 05, 2001.

I would think that american city children would share their British counterparts views. It is sad but probably true that so few learn the satisfaction of the full cycle feeling ( till, plant, nurture, harvest, store and sweat).

It will be a sad day when only the cooperate farms feed a starving world with no regard for food safety or conservation techniques. Suddenly the earth that supported you will be the earth that devours your body than covers it-and the men that honestly tried to stop the onslaught are the men who are sneered at.

Maybe Tommorow ?-- we will be smart enough and gain the courage to fight this problem, but I seriously doubt it !

-- Joel Rosen (Joel681@webtv.net), January 05, 2001.

I remember, as a child in the Midwest corn and dairy belt, thinking that farmers did nothing but lean on their fence and watch their corn grow!!

-- Rebekah (daniel1@itss.net), January 05, 2001.

The article does not specify the children's background, but I strongly suspect they are city kids. Also, how many is "many"? Half, three quarters, two percent? Country kids have some clue as to what is going on around them. One half of all children in the USA are city kids and I suspect the percentage is higher in England. I would find it interesting to know what adults think about the same subject.

-- JLS in NW AZ (stalkingbull007@AOL.com), January 05, 2001.

Having lived in England, I'm surprised at the results of this research. So much of the UK is rural and farming is a big part of life there. Almost every square inch of Britain has been farmed at some point! Britain also offers some great agriculture-based educational sites, such as rare breed farms. Children can visit these places and see all kinds of animals. I've yet to come across anything like that around upstate New York. Swindon, BTW, is not a rural place. Rural gloucestershire is lovely and quite "yuppified." NOt sure if that is a representative sample of British children.

-- amy (acook@in4web.com), January 05, 2001.

Yah ,...and ask a kid about Canadians and they will say we live in Igloos and drive dogsleds!Seriously they do!!!!lol...teri

-- teri murphy (mrs_smurf2000@yahoo.ca), January 06, 2001.

Screw em! What difference does it make? Will their ignorance cause society to do away with farmers? let them try that one.

-- (China_coaster@yahoo.com), January 08, 2001.

Yes, when we moved from Alaska back to Oregon, and I started sixth grade, the other children thought my brothers and I must be Eskimos! (We're not, just to clarify any possible misunderstandings!)

Children growing up today who have no clear idea of where their food comes from, will be making decisions in the future that will affect farmers adversely. It may quickly become clear that those decisions were poorly thought out, as food becomes scarce and prices get higher. However, sometimes it is much harder to undo those mistakes than it was to make them in the first place. Probably the first people to suffer will be the farmers (their suffering has already started), real efforts to undo the damage won't come until the rest of the disconnected populace starts to suffer too. By them they may have put so many experienced farmers out of business, and paved over so much of the good farmland, that it will be difficult to sort the mess out and solve the problems. We will have to wait and see. Unfortunatly, the waiting is likely to be through some very difficult and unpleasant times for all -- so it really does matter what city children think of farming.

-- Kathleen Sanderson (stonycft@worldpath.net), January 08, 2001.

So the answer is to have the city kids come to tour the farm! You can even charge 50 cents a head, I usually use this to make goat milk pudding, and serve it in ice cream cones. We let all the kids, take turns milking a goat, (its always fun to put a buck up to be milked by a teacher, or better yet a big mouthed boy) brushing, and feeding babies, collect "planted" eggs in the hen house, not sure how many of the kids figure out that 10 hens don't really lay 24 eggs :)I know alot are amazed that their are eggs with no rooster, and also pick whatever there is out in the garden. We will also plant something even if it is just radish. The kids bring a sack lunch, eat it sitting on hay bales around the yard, and learn important lessons about stinging nettle and fire ants! The teachers are always the ones who really enjoy themselves. A standard liability contract is sent to the school before the kids come, instructions on wearing only closed toe shoes, and also I always inquire if there is any milk allergies.

Springs almost here, so when you are knee deep in baby chicks, ducklings and goat kids, how about inviting some kids out to visit? Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh TX (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), January 08, 2001.

That's a great idea Vicki!! As a child, one of our school field trips was to a dairy farm. What an eye-opener. We'd had chickens and such, but I was still foggy on the actual cow end of the milk deal. I knew what they were, how you got the milk, etc., but there is nothing like the real experience of 'being there'. We've sponsored school trips to 'The Horse Farm' in past, as well as one church group who came at Christmas to experience what it was like to be born in a manger...I don't know what those kids made out of it! A hay net?

-- Julie Froelich (firefly1@nnex.net), January 08, 2001.

Having always been a "country kid" I thought that people in town sat around with maids doing all the work and all they had to do was watch tv. BORING!!! When I moved to town after getting married, the postman laughed at me when I put money in the box to buy stamps. I had always done that, didn't know any better. :-) I homeschool my children ,but at church they have had comments made to them about the goats. We had the kids out here and at least the parents thought it was neat. Maybe some kids are never meant to be in the country. ;-) I don't think my sister was meant to be, she was never happy with it.

-- Cindy in Ok (cynthiacluck@yahoo.com), January 10, 2001.

Before moving here, I lived in a city. I boarded my horse in a state park not too far away. Alot people didn't even know there was a stable there. Mostly it was inner city people getting away for a picnic in the park. Anyway, I riding the bridle path once when a kid across the pond exclaimed, "Look, there's a horse!" Another said, "That's not a horse." To which I replied, "What do you think it is? A big dog?"

This was not a place to educate. Some riders had rocks thrown at them. One man demanded that I let his son ride my horse and got mad when I said no. Gee, I wonder if he would have let me take his car for a spin.

-- Dee (gdgtur@goes.com), January 10, 2001.