Conferences
Empowering Agritourism Service Providers to Strengthen Agritourism Programs as a Farm Diversification Strategy
Doolarie Singh-Knights, Lindsey Pashow, Chadley Hollas, Lisa Chase, Claudia Schmidt, and R. Lamie
Summary
Farmers are challenged with making farm-diversification decisions that shape the sustainability of their operations. AGRITOURISM - a revenue-generating endeavor that links visitors to a WORKING agribusiness for the purposes of education and generating additional income - is increasingly being used as a farm-diversification strategy to help supplement revenue, diversify cash flow streams, and improve farm sustainability by leveraging consumer demand. The 2022 USDA Census reports combined agritourism experiences and direct sales brought in $4.5 billion in revenues to approximately 140,000 farms and ranches.
Agritourism-specific resources is important to farm viability. Farmers who want to begin/expand agritourism enterprises need help understanding agritourism opportunities, challenges, and best practices. However, there is no central repository for existing materials to make them easily accessible to educators and farmers. Further, many states have very few, if any, trained Agritourism Service Providers (ATSPs) with the appropriate skills set/networks to adequately assist agritourism operations. Many regions have underserved agritourism operators because of a lack of understanding of and support for agritourism as a farm-diversification strategy.
This project’s aims to provide support to ATSPs to help them empower farmers to implement sustainable agritourism diversification strategies to complement viable operations. This presentation will outline the project’s plan to develop a “National Holistic Agritourism Training Toolbox”, provide ATSPs’ professional development, and organize an “Agritourism Community of Practice”, to elevate the effectiveness of regional agritourism training programs. The project team aims to SOLICIT VALUABLE FEEDBACK on the project, as well as encourage ATSPs participation in the project from among conference attendees.
Details
| Conference | 2025 Extension Risk Management Education National Conference |
| Presentation Type | 30-minute Concurrent |