Teaching pro-environmental attitudes on the farm: Cyprus

5 October 2026

Module 3 of the Green Agritainment course, “Educational strategies for increasing pro-environmental attitudes”, was prepared in Cyprus by STANDO LTD. Its six lessons are presented by a conservation biologist, by Vasilis Kyprianou of Riverland Biofarm, an organic farm, and by Charalampos Theopemptou, president of the parliamentary committee on the environment.

Green laughs and tasty paths

The first lesson combines humour and food. Instead of a plain “save water” sign, a sign in an olive grove could read “Save water, our olives don’t like salty tears”; instead of “turn off the lights”, “Our chickens need beauty sleep, too”. On a vineyard walk, a guide can talk about bees pollinating, soil capturing carbon and sunshine on the grapes. “Zero kilometre” picnics, where visitors pick vegetables and eat them on the spot, show local food without trucks. Trainees are asked to design their own “laugh and snack walk”.

Turning the farm into a playground

For children, the module proposes hands-on games:

• finding three different insects without harming them, then discussing their role on the farm;
• drawing herb leaves and identifying the herbs by smell and touch;
• hanging printed pictures of local birds around the farm for groups to find and identify from a chart;
• “nature detectives” who search for items on a list and then tell the story of what they found.

Hands-on and inclusive workshops

At Riverland Biofarm, visitors feed the animals free of charge, watch or try milking, and take part in halloumi and anari making followed by a tasting. During milking, staff joke with children about where chocolate or vanilla milk comes out. The farm adapts activities to different visitors: access for people with mobility difficulties, audio description for people with visual impairments, safe tools for small children and adapted spaces for older people. A group activity lets participants take the farmer’s role: milking, feeding, cleaning the animals’ spaces and walking with them in nature.

Smart use of resources

Charalampos Theopemptou focuses on everyday practices for agritourism units: careful portion sizes to avoid food waste, local and varied produce on the plate, repairing instead of buying new, rechargeable batteries, and correct sorting of recycling. He also suggests simple, light-hearted questions to encourage guests not to change towels after every shower, not to leave taps running and to stay on the paths.

Products that tell a story

The last lesson shows how farm products can carry the message: a jar of farm marmalade given with its story, soap made from local olive oil with lavender seeds, packets of farm-grown oregano as gifts, and tomato plants that visitors plant and later come back to harvest, with photo updates in between.

Module 3 is free in the Green Agritainment digital course, with video lessons, slides and transcripts. You can start from the course in English or open the Module 3 course materials directly.

Green Agritainment – VET strategies for Edutainment in European Agritourism. Project number 2024-1-IE01-KA220-VET-000254134. Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.