A Trip to a British WWOOF Farm: Traveling with WWOOF (Part 1)

Photography / Chen Yufen

WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) is a global nonprofit organization founded in 1971, dedicated to providing opportunities for organic farms and volunteer helpers to connect with one another.

People from all over the world who are interested in organic farming take part in farm work in exchange for accommodation, learning about and experiencing organic living; farm hosts gain extra hands to help with the busy farm work, and are also able to pass on practical knowledge about organic living and farming.

According to WWOOF's rules, farms must provide free food and lodging to volunteers, and volunteers work at most 6 hours per day and no more than 5 working days per week. Participating volunteers are collectively called WWOOFers, and they can choose different types of farms to experience, from large commercial farms down to the backyards of ordinary small families. WWOOFers have very flexible choices, and outside of farm work they also have free time to do as they please, which is why it has become a money-saving travel option for many young people in Europe and America.

In the spring of 2010, I joined the UK WWOOF organization and set off on an exchange food-and-lodging trip to organic farms, using five months to visit five farms.

WWOOF (under its former name) originated in London, UK, and was initiated in 1971 by Sue Coppard. Because of Sue's own support for the organic agriculture movement, she hoped to unite people's strength through an organization and provide the general public with opportunities to go to the countryside and take part in farming in their spare time.

Through cooperation with the UK organic certification association, the Soil Association, WWOOF gradually grew and thrived. Currently more than 6000 farmers from over 100 countries around the world have joined, and it has also expanded from its original weekend volunteer help to opportunities for participation throughout the whole year.

Because WWOOF has developed in the UK for a long time, the farmer members who join retain considerable flexibility and autonomy, and WWOOFers can choose farmers they are interested in from the system database and contact them directly. Basically, the UK WWOOF organization does not get involved in any selection process.

In choosing the UK, apart from travel, my motive was very simple: I just wanted to steadily understand how organic farms operate through firsthand experience.

As a long-term supporter of organic farming, I am very passionate about issues related to the environment and human rights arising from people's daily food; during the process of doing internship and outreach work with local international environmental organizations in Europe, I gradually discovered that what I needed went far beyond sitting in an office absorbing secondhand information. Instead, I hoped to understand organic farming in a down-to-earth way, and to understand why I should spend more money to support buying organic food. I hoped to support the development of organic farming out of conscience and morality, rather than dancing to the tune of media reports or enjoying the fashionable feeling of pursuing a green lifestyle.

The beginning of WWOOF was both exciting and nerve-racking; everything in the future was unknown, and I did not even have any idea how long I would travel. But what I could confirm at that moment was that after two weeks of searching and making contacts, I had finally found the first farm willing to take me in.

Basically, most farm hosts hope that WWOOFers will help for at least two weeks or more, so I decided that after arriving in England I would slowly plan the rest of the journey and farms. After all, joining WWOOF was quite an unexpected arrangement, so let the surprises remain for the unknown travels ahead!

–To be continued–
A New Experience in Organic Living: Exchange Accommodation at a British Organic Farm with WWOOF (Series Part 2)

Let's look forward together to the introduction of the farm life coming next!– A permaculture farming experimental site, a self-sufficient small family in Wales, an Irish biodiversity boot camp, and a joyful summer camp in Scotland.