Landowner Liability And Agritourism Operation

With the significant increase in agritourism in the past decade, comes additional responsibility and liability of ag landowners to those who pay to be on the ag operation. What level of legal liability must the landowner operating an agritourism site consider when inviting customers to their business? It is most important to remember is that once ag producers have invited the public to come to their farm and those participants are paying to be there is higher level of responsibility. National Agricultural Law Center's Rusty Rumley says Rumley: "Any person that is showing up for business purpose, the owners have a much higher duty of care. Their basic duty is they're to make the premises safe. Bringing someone out to a farming operation there is a lot more risk involved. Farming operations have all kinds of risks you may or not be thinking about." Rumley shares the example of bees on the premises. A farmer can check for bees and wasps but there is no guarantee that someone who maybe highly allergic to bees is not stung. He continues. Rumley: "There is also other dangers. There is potholes, there are limbs on the ground, there is all kind of obstructions that someone could trip over and get hurt. So there is no real way to go out there and make the premises perfectly safe. How can you mitigate this risk? A lot of them are doing this by if you have a large farming operation you need to confine the participants into a small area. If you can keep them in a smaller area you can do a much better job of policing them and trying to remove as much risk as possible."