Farms in the green care context

Abstract

The concept Green Care loosely refers to the utilization of nature and farms to produce social, healthcare and education services. Green Care operations in Europe have grown from small-scale trials based on the initiatives of farmers or needs of healthcare to holistic service models. Green Care is deemed to add value to the service sector in all its sub-sectors, offering customers a low threshold to participate in functional and interactive farm work. The nature based service model combined with social and healthcare services offers completely new instruments that produce more customer-oriented wellbeing services. Green Care is especially suitable for small farms that have original native breeds of production and pet animals. It is hoped that Green Care can enhance the conservation of valuable cultural rural environments and native breeds and through the increase of services support the vitality of rural areas. Many European countries support Green Care on both government and municipality levels. In many countries farmers have networked and organize learning circles to develop Green Care operations.