We help children understand the link between farms and food

explaining that ‘everything we eat used to be alive’. This is often met with puzzled faces, so we start talking about their favourite foods and where the different ingredients come from.

Pizza is a popular choice, so I explain how farmers grow wheat that’s turned into flour. Tomato sauce is easier to understand, especially if the fruits are ripening on the vine in the vegetable patch, and we can pull up onions and garlic while we explain how we cook them together to make a sauce.

I often ask how we can change liquid milk into the cheese we grate on top of a pizza. One girl once suggested they freeze milk to make it hard. I could understand how she got to that, but when I asked what would happen if we grated frozen milk into our sandwiches, they all giggled at the thought of soggy packed lunches. Talking to children about how their food is produced is always rewarding as well as amusing, but I think there’s another dimension to these important conversations: if we can encourage children to question where their food comes from, then surely we can help to raise a generation who are passionate about animal welfare and the environment, and committed to valuing their food and those who work hard to produce it.