What children learn about farming in Year 5
What the national curriculum expects
Farming isn’t named as its own topic in the geography curriculum. It sits under human geography, where pupils should describe and understand key aspects including types of settlement and land use, economic activity including trade links, and the distribution of natural resources including energy, food, minerals and water. It also connects to place knowledge, where pupils study regions of the UK, Europe and North or South America, and to climate zones, since climate largely determines what can be farmed where.
Key knowledge and concepts
Within this topic, children build knowledge across how land is used and where food comes from:
Land use in the UK
How land across the country is used, and why
Types of farming
Arable, pastoral and mixed farming, and what shapes the choice
Farming and climate
How climate zones determine what can be grown where
Farming around the world
Comparing farming in the UK with North and South America
Allotments
Growing food on a small scale, and why it matters
Food transportation
How food travels from farm to plate
Trade links
How food moves between countries
Maps and fieldwork
Using maps and grid references to study land use
Where this topic sits within KS2
Farming sits within KS2 human geography rather than as a named topic of its own. Schools usually teach it alongside land use, settlement and trade, often in upper KS2 where children can handle the economic ideas.
How to access this topic
Farming doesn’t sit on its own in the curriculum. The Cornerstones geography curriculum is fully sequenced from EYFS through Year 1 to Year 6, so you can see what comes before, what follows and how the whole picture fits together. We’ve done the thinking, so your planning time goes into teaching, not sequencing.
Full curriculum
Subject curriculum
Quick Teach Individual lessons and resources for supplementing what you already teach.
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See how the full Cornerstones Geography Curriculum sequences topics like this one across every year group.