Last year I was awarded the John Platt Travel Scholarship by Reaseheath College and the Cheshire Agricultural Society. It’s a travel grant that enables a young person from Cheshire to go and study an agricultural topic of their choice anywhere in the world.

I decided I wanted to go to New Zealand to study farm diversification and agri-tourism, and to look at how farmers there are engaging with the general public.

As a farmer, I passionately believe that we need to get better at showing people what we do in the UK, and so I wanted to investigate how they achieved this in a country like New Zealand, where farming is similar but on a bigger scale.

So in January I headed out there to visit numerous farms in the North and South islands over three weeks, just to see how it’s all done, but also to find new ideas. As you can see from the video, it was a very special trip indeed….