GIVE IT A GROW! MORRISONS DONATES GARDENING EQUIPMENT TO SCHOOLS ACROSS THE UK TO RECONNECT KIDS WITH THE NATURAL WORLD

– It’s Good To Grow scheme will see in-store and online spending rewarded by giving gardening equipment and seeds to UK schoolchildren –

– Move to encourage children to eat fruit and vegetables as 70 per cent are more likely to eat produce that they have grown themselves –

Morrisons has launched ‘It’s Good To Grow’, a campaign in all of its stores that will donate gardening equipment to schoolchildren across the UK in the hope of educating kids about where their food comes from.

The scheme will see customers gain one ‘It’s Good to Grow’ token in their My Morrisons account via the app and website for every £10 that is spent in store or online, which can then be donated to any school to redeem equipment such as gardening tools, composting bins and seeds to get growing.

The National Food Strategy, published earlier this year, outlined the need for the UK to improve dietary health whilst protecting the environment, warning that a failure to do so could lead to obesity costing the NHS £15 billion by 2035^[1].

Morrisons hopes the initiative will help build a connection between kids and healthy food by making school children more aware of the journey of food from field to fork.

New research by YouGov on behalf of Morrisons has found that some children aged six to 15 do not have a good understanding of how fruits and vegetables are grown. For example, only 34 per cent correctly identified how asparagus is grown, with 32 per cent stating that asparagus is grown underground and 21 per cent saying they don’t know how it is grown. This highlights a need to show kids how food is grown to help them eat better now and in the future.

Being Britain’s biggest foodmaker, Morrisons is empowering children to connect with the natural world for them to better understand what they are putting into their bodies. Giving children the tools and knowledge needed can help develop better dietary habits – with research finding that out of 1,115 children surveyed aged six to 15, 70 per cent are more likely to eat produce that they have grown and cared for themselves.

Over half (56 per cent) of the children aged six to 10 in the UK are not currently eating their recommended amount of fruit and vegetables each day. The Morrisons scheme aims to build a closer relationship between children and fruit and vegetables so they can see that it can be easy and inexpensive to grow their own produce once they have the necessary skills.

Rachel Eyre, Chief Customer & Marketing Officer at Morrisons, comments:

“We’re really proud of the work that we do for British food and with British farmers. It’s great to be able to launch a campaign that will give our youngest customers the knowledge and equipment to gain a better understanding about where food comes from and how to grow it. We want children to engage with nature as it will help them to start eating more healthily now and in the future, because they are more likely to eat fruit and vegetables when they understand them or have grown them themselves.”

‘It’s Good To Grow’ aims to transform 14,000 schools in Britain into Morrisons Growing Schools by giving children additional educational resources to demonstrate the importance of improving their health, whilst making use of their environment.

This is the latest initiative introduced by Morrisons that aims to encourage a sustainable future and follows wider business commitments such as pledging to be completely supplied by net zero emission British farms by 2030 and committing to the Peas Please initiative, run by the Food Foundation, to encourage customers to eat more vegetables.

Download the My Morrisons app via the App Store and Google Play to start earning ‘It’s Good to Grow’ tokens that can be donated to schools for them to redeem gardening equipment.

For more information visit: https://www.itsgoodtogrow.co.uk .

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