20 Jan 2015

Farmer opens gates to city folk

3:20 pm on 20 January 2015

A Marton sheep and beef farmer, near Palmerston North, will open his gates tomorrow to give urban people a snap shot of what farming is like.

The open day is being organised by the Federated Farmer's Manawatu-Rangitikei president, James Stewart, to educate people and connect urban and rural communities.

Mr Stewart said a lot more people are living in cities and so were losing connections to the farming community.

"Basically we're just opening up the farm gate for mainly urban people to just experience life on farms. So we've got a shearing demonstration, there's going to be mustering, just basically viewing the workings of a sheep farm, looking through the wool shed, weighing, things like that."

Mr Stewart said with the primary industries expected to grow significantly in the next ten years, days like this were just another way to attract people's interest.

"We need people that will be working on farms and a lot of these people will be coming from the towns, the rural populations will hardly keep up with replacing the next generation of work force on farms so if they can get a bit of a snap shot of what it's like on a farm and maybe it might just sow a seed that they think this is pretty cool."

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