TEN per cent of Britons think all farmers smoke pipes while almost a quarter believe they habitually wear tweed jackets, according to a new survey by LEAF (Linking Environment And Farming).
The organisation, which questioned a sample of the public ahead of this weekend's Open Farm Sunday, discovered that nearly one in five people believed farming to be 'old-fashioned'.
Only five per cent of people believe a farmer is switched on to new technology, despite most modern farms relying on a host of technologies, including GPS steering systems, robot milking machines and even drones.
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The survey also found:
• less than 10 per cent of people realised that many farmers were degree educated;
• more than one in five have never visited a farm;
• one in seven get their farming knowledge from Emmerdale;
and, in contrast, one in 10 people think every farmer smokes a pipe, while 24 per cent expect all farmers to wear tweed jackets.
Annabel Shackleton, Open Farm Sunday manager at LEAF, said: “Farming has been a major part of British life for hundreds of years but that doesn’t mean that farming is stuck in the past. As a nation we’ve embraced technology at home and at work and farmers are no different."
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