THE countryside will come to the city with the launch of a programme that aims to get every child in Yorkshire to visit a farm in the coming year.

A farm, complete with livestock, will be created in the centre of York in September to start the region's Year of Food and Farming.

The campaign will promote healthy living to young people by giving them experience of the countryside, farming and food. It also aims to attract youngsters to work in land-based industries.

Project chairman Steve Willis visited the show yesterday to tell farmers about the benefits of hosting a school visit.

Mr Willis, who farms near Harrogate, said: "Farmers are now in the real world and have to produce what they have a market for. Before that, we had very little say in how our products were sold. The industry has started to reconnect itself with the consumer; we need to do that to stay in business. Farmers should see the Year of Food and Farming as a way of striking up that connection."

Sophie Throup, whose family farm the Nun Monkton estate, near York, said she had hosted school visits and urged other farmers to do so.

Payments are available to farms that welcome school groups, and training helps farmers find out what teachers looked for from a visit and how they could get their message over.

Ms Throup said: "One of the key messages we like to get across is how farming is there for a purpose.

"A lot of children, particularly those from inner cities, think that farming is there to make the countryside look pretty. We show them the reality -that a farm is a factory without walls or ceiling.

"We get a lot out of it ourselves. It makes us realise that what we see as our ordinary lives has quite an impact on people who have never seen this way of life."

Geoff Liggins, the headteacher of Nidderdale High School and Community College, at Pateley Bridge, near Harrogate, said schools had a duty to instil in students an empathy with the environment. He said: "Children need to appreciate not just the countryside as it is today, but its evolution. They need to see how farming attracts tourists and helps the prosperity of the area."

Details of the year-long project are available at www.yearoffood andfarming.org.uk

Schools can apply for free teaching materials and activities.