DEAR EDITOR
The finding from the National Dairy Council that more than half of children under 12 have never seen a cow being milked should be a national wake-up call.
We are raising children with less and less understanding of where food comes from, or the work involved in producing it.
For many young people, food begins in a supermarket fridge or arrives at the front door in a bag. That level of disconnect should concern all of us. This is not just a farming issue; it is an education issue and a life skills issue. If children do not understand food production, farming and nature, we cannot expect them to fully understand health, sustainability or the environment either.
At Airfield, a working farm and food education provider in Dublin, we see this gap every day. Many children arrive never having seen where eggs come from or vegetables growing, met farm animals or spoken to a farmer. Yet the moment they experience it first-hand, the connection is immediate. Places like Airfield now play a critical role in bridging the growing divide between urban life and the realities of food production.
These experiences should not be rare or novel for children in Ireland. If we lose that connection entirely, we risk raising generations with little understanding of the very systems that sustain them.
SHARING OPTIONS