Deciding visitor numbers for your Open Farms event is up to you. You set this in your event description on the website.

A few things to keep in mind when considering visitor numbers:

• Plan for no-shows – we estimate that around 50% of registered visitors will not turn-up on the day (don’t take it personally!).

• How many volunteers will you have? Research suggests that 2 team members per 50 people (including children) is about right to both manage a group and spend a little time personally greeting and interacting with people. Add a volunteer for any activities that need supervision, like animal contact areas.

• Once you have your structure in place, scaling an Open Farm day can be relatively straightforward e.g. adding a few volunteers or another activity will not drastically change your risk assessment or other planning, but will allow for a few more visitors. With that in mind, feel free to start with a lower visitor number and increase it as your planning takes shape.

• We know that Open Farm days are popular, particularly for those farms close to urban centres. If you feel comfortable inviting a few more visitors, please go ahead and give a few more Kiwis the chance to see where their food comes from.

• You’re welcome to promote your event in any way you like. We’ll even help out with some editable Open Farms posters you might like to share around town. Just keep in mind that if you do publicise your own event, visitors might not come through the Open Farms website & registration process and won’t be included in the visitor information we provide for your event.

• You can download and print a full list of registered attendees for your event – including party size, adult & children split, estimated times of arrival and anything in particular visitors are interested in seeing or asking.

You can view your registered visitor numbers at any time by using your farmer-login on the Open Farms website. You can also increase your numbers (but not decrease) if you do recruit more volunteers and feel comfortable scaling up.

Note that we have set the minimum number of registered visitors per event at 75 (for about 35 on-the-day).