Care Farms: A New Model For Good Health And Well-Being?

Care farming has been defined as “the use of commercial farms and agriculture landscapes as a base for promoting mental and physical health, through normal farming activity.”

Care farms improve the health and well-being of disadvantaged people living with disabilities

The number of care farms (also called social farms) are growing worldwide since a decade, particularly in Europe. For example, in France we can find around 900 and in the Netherlands around 1000.

A wide range of people are using care farms:

• With chronic illnesses: mental illness (in general), depression, dementia, learning disabilities, substance misuse, etc
• Suffering from an acute burnout (professional, as parents…)
• Identity, gender…dilemmas
• Caregivers
• Ex-prisoners
• Etc.

People having encountered any type of accident on their path of life are using care farms

Care farms are positively impacting physical health and mental health, through:

• “Green care” concept: interacting with nature
• “Community living” concept: improvement in social interactions
• Positive behavioral impacts: reduced police contact, unavailability of drugs, etc
• Skill buildings
• Purposeful work
•  

Physical and mental health are intimately linked. Nature is a safe and adequate environment to adopt healthy lifestyle

The effects of nature can be obtained if we:

• Only experience natural environment (Passive): viewing nature, changing lifestyle
• Interact with the environment (Active): gardening, farming, interacting with animals, etc

The benefits of social farms are numerous. Among them:

• Decrease in life stress (away from the crowd and life challenges)
• Reduction in anxiety and depression
• Increase self-esteem
• Improve physical health: walking, exercising, eating healthy and natural foods, etc
• Developing friendships
• Weaning from drugs
• Opportunities of social reinsertion
• Opportunities of work
• Improve quality of life