Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue has announced that four ‘social farming’ projects will share funding amounting to €377,000.
The announcement of the successful projects follows on from a competitive public procurement procedure under the 2021 Rural Innovation and Development Fund.
“I am delighted that my department can continue to provide support for social farming across rural Ireland. This very worthwhile initiative provides a significant service throughout rural communities for disadvantaged groups who are availing of a range of health service supports,” Minister McConalogue said.
“It provides participants with the opportunity to improve their health and well-being and grow their confidence by doing ordinary farm activities.
“It also helps service providers to meet the development and progression goals of clients in a very reasonable way. When operating from a working family farm, these initiatives support farm diversification and help farmers connect with the wider community,” he added.
Social farming is the practice of offering, on a voluntary basis, farming and horticultural participation in a farming environment as a choice to people who avail of a range of therapeutic day support services.
These operations are run in a number of settings, including working family farms. The successful service providers have been identified as having “the vision and capability to develop substantial social farming model projects”.
The four projects that will receive funding are:
- Leitrim Integrated Development Company – for mainstreaming social farming as an option for people accessing supports across a range of sectors and services;
- Down Syndrome Ireland (Cork branch) – to provide opportunities for participation in a purpose-built farm, the ‘Field of Dreams’, with horticulture and animal care elements;
- South Kerry Development Partnership – for a model project which will increase participant and host farmer engagement so that the social farming opportunity is available to more people in Kerry and to offer choice to people with disabilities to engage;
- IRD Duhallow – for a model project which will promote rehabilitation, social inclusion, training and improved quality of life in a non-clinical setting using agriculture, including plants and animals, for people across a wide spectrum of disability.
In addition to these projects, the contract with Leitrim Integrated Development Company for the provision of a social farming network has also been extended by a further year.
The extension of that contract, with associated funding of €400,000, will allow for the further development of the national network known as ‘Social Farming Ireland’.
This group works in collaboration with other local development companies (namely West Limerick Resources, Waterford Leader Partnership and South West Mayo Development Company) where regional social farming development officers are based.