Working With Schools & Colleges

Each year groups of school children and college students visit Yeo Valley. The production dairies aren't really designed to accommodate visitors’ tours so they usually take a fair amount of time and energy to organise. There is therefore a limit to how many Dairy visits that can be run each year. However our Wills Barn centre on the organic farm offers an excellent alternative, providing a fantastic opportunity to experience organic food, farming and environmentally-friendly living.

Yeo Valley is committed to working with the education sector to help develop a wider understanding of farming, food manufacturing, organic food and the real value of quality food. Amongst others, Yeo Valley works with: Exeter University’s department of manufacturing, with an annual visit from their MSc students; Millfield School's Department of Economics; Brymore School in Cannington and Haygrove School in Bridgwater.

Brymore School is unusual in that has its own working organic farm, staffed by the pupils aged 13 -17. Their 17 dairy cows supply Yeo Valley's Cannington dairy with milk (one of 80 south-west organic farms delivering to the dairy) and the dairy’s field is rented out to the school as grazing land for their animals. The pupils (all boys at Brymore) quickly become very knowledgeable on farming and organic matters, with a rota to decide who has to get up early to do the morning milking, and they even go out to local primary schools to explain to younger schoolchildren what organic is all about.

Haygrove School has, for the past six years, featured Yeo Valley Cannington as part of its GCSE curriculum on Food Technology. The Year 10 pupils, on the first year of their GCSE course, visit the dairy for a tour and a briefing on the yogurt-making process and the way organic food is produced. The pupils then have to go back to school to carry out more research and to produce a dessert using some of Yeo Valley Organic’s products, complete with ingredients listing, nutritional information, product photographs and packaging ideas – just as Yeo Valley's Development team do for their new products.