Around 80 people are currently on the waiting list for the Kerry Social Farming project, the organisation's annual meeting heard.

The award-winning project, launched in 2013, offers people who avail of a range of therapeutic day support services the chance to participate in farming activities on a voluntary basis.

2025 marked one of the busiest years for the project with 57 participants and an average of 43 host farmers across the county.

There are currently 38 active host farms as some are on seasonal breaks, along with 60 participants. The team is hoping to have around 50 active farmers in 2026.

The project has also two community allotments and a community garden, supporting a further 17 people.

Joseph McCrohan, the rural development manager with South Kerry Development Partnership (SKDP), who manages Kerry Social Farming, said that 2,500 social farming days were delivered in 2025.

"There's still pressure on us to deliver a farm for every participant and for new people. We’ll be working on that in 2026," McCrohan said.

As the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) funding cycle comes to an end this year, the Kerry Social Farming project will be required to take part in a national tendering process later this year.

"It's really important now that the department make a decision to increase that budget before they put out the tender," McCrohan added.

While DAFM is the principle funding source for the project, additional support has also been provided by Kerry County Council, Local Link Kerry and Kerry Dairy Ireland.

Participants in the project told the meeting how social farming had benefitted their lives, including improving their physical and mental health.

While service providers including Kerry Parents and Friends Association, St John of God Kerry and the Health Service Executive (HSE) praised the "person centred" and "collaborative" approach of the project.

Budget

Eamon Horgan, a host farmer and chair the Kerry Social Farming Working Group, believes the €117,000 spent on the project last year represents “one of the best budgets in the country” in terms of what it delivered on the ground.

"We will need more money going forward to ensure the success of this project and to ensure that it grows as well and enables other participants to come onto farms as well," he said.

"The chance to explore their own abilities, to do different things on the farm, the chance to interact with animals, the chance to interact with families with sons, daughters, with parents on the farm and become a part of a family and a part of a community as well,” Horgan added.

Peter Johnson, assistant principal officer over the rural innovation and development fund in the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine was among more than 100 people who attended the meeting in the Brehon Hotel in Killarney.

"It was really inspiring. It was great to see a mix of participants, host farmers and the organisers of Kerry Social Farming themselves involved.

"You can see the enthusiasm that's around the room. People are very dedicated to what they're doing, and it's just obvious the positive benefits that it's having for participants, their families and broader community in general," he told Agriland.

Johnson believes social farming programmes across Ireland "are all benefiting the broader community in general".

"I'd like to see them funded and funded as well as they possibly can be. But the reality is, we work within a structure in government that is budgeted for and we have to do fully public procurement tenders in order to be compliant, in order to make sure that the money that the taxpayer funds us with is spent effectively and correctly.

"That won't be up to me to decide that, that would be up to somebody far higher than me," Johnson said.