Agritourism Growth

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

Yesterday, we shared how agritourism is doing during the pandemic. This may cause some to ask the question: is agritourism a growing niche within the industry? The answer is yes, according to Shermain Hardesty, who spent years administering the University of California Small Farm Program.

Hardesty… “We are getting people interested more in the food that they eat and local food. And so they want to know more about how their food is grown and produced. And so they like to come and visit the farm. So that's one way that agritourism, I think, has gotten a real boost.”

The small farm program helps agritourism operations with marketing and visibility through their website www.calagtour.org.

Hardesty… “And the other thing that we work with them on is business planning. They start to realize that, you know, how much effort is involved in and the costs that they need to consider say in training employees, and all the various permits that they might need to get. In our survey, we found out that agritourism can be a fairly good revenue generator for some of these operations. Our survey indicated that we had 41% of the operations generating $100,000 or more a year from agritourism. You know, this is in addition to their normal farming activities.”

Visit that website www.calagtour.org to find a farm to visit near you.