Northumberland farmer champions 'plant your pants' education campaign

A Northumberland farmer is backing an education charity’s campaign to improve children’s knowledge of where their food comes from.

A survey conducted by ChildWise for The Country Trust found that around 40% of children don’t know that most of their food relies on soil and a third say they don’t have the opportunity to get their hands in soil.

The findings reinforce the Country Trust’s call for every child’s education to include hands-on learning about the miraculous life support system beneath their feet and the farms that produce our food.

And to help illustrate it, they are inviting people to plant a pair of cotton pants this spring and then dig them up two months later to see for themselves the life within the soil.

Tom Fairfax, a regenerative organic farmer based in Mindrum, who hosts Country Trust Farm Discovery school visits and is a Plant Your Pants soil champion, said: “Healthy soil is teeming with life, much of which can’t be seen by the naked eye, so getting our hands in the soil and seeing the way it acts on a pair of cotton pants is a brilliant way to experience its magic.