Agritourism as a Tool for Rural Development & Women's Empowerment

welcome to the 12th virtual agritourism gathering my name is lisa chase i'm a professor at university of vermont extension and the director of the vermont tourism research center and today we are going to be talking about agritourism as a tool for rural development and women's empowerment we developed this virtual series about a year and a half ago as a way to stay connected during the pandemic and we are now planning ahead through may with at least one virtual gathering each month leading up to the international workshop on agritourism that will take place in person in vermont and also online the dates are august 30th to september 1st of 2022 so mark your calendar save the date let's take a look and see who's actually getting our emails and who is here with us today i just launched a poll that says describe yourself check all that apply please go ahead and check as many boxes as hats that you wear and i know that many of us wear many many hats um and also take a moment to introduce yourself into chat and in the chat make sure that when you type into chat though you click everyone i think the default is hosts and panelists if you are comfortable sharing who you are send chat to everyone and let them know who you are where you're from and what your interest is in agritourism i can't wait until we're all together in vermont and we can look around in the room and see who's here with us i get the privilege of looking at registration so we know we had about 200 people registered from over 30 countries it's and it's a very impressive group hopefully many of you will introduce yourselves in chat and you can see who's here in the virtual space with us um looking at the poll you can see we've got about a really good mix we've got a little over 20 percent farmer ranchers and extension service providers and we've got wow almost 40 percent researchers and quite a few tourism professionals business owners educators government agencies and non-profits and now now that we know who's here with us let's move to our topic for the day i want to introduce our moderator dr claudia schmidt claudia is originally from germany but she has studied and worked in canada and currently she is an assistant professor of marketing and local and regional food systems at pennsylvania state university with both a research and an extension appointment her focus is on diversification options for agricultural producers with an emphasis on agritourism and craft beverages for several years now dr schmidt has been studying women in agriculture and she has done some extremely interesting research on gender and agritourism that will be published very soon we are fortunate to have claudia here today with us to share her research and moderate the discussion claudia great thank you so much lisa and welcome to everyone and uh thanks for joining us so um i will start with a research overview for the united states and then we will move on to claudia maria and elena so women in agri-tourism are foremost farmers and they are operating in the agriculture policy environment in the united states so before focusing on agri-tourism i just want to circle back and provide a really quick overview about women farmers in the united states so first there is a lot of research out there at least when it comes to to economics on women farmers in developing countries and not so much in developed countries specifically in the us and bad attention to gender has changed just recently it also came with the release of the new agricultural census which is conducted every five years in the united states so these maps you see on the left they show the development of female principal operators across the agriculture census years so you can see that the share of female operators has quite increased over the over the past years in 2017 we see a a major shift because there has been a major shift in the census because now the census counts up to four operators on a farm so you can see now way more female farm operators that are counted and we cannot really compare it with uh previous years so studies that looked at the available data and literature from different areas of study found that so different areas of study i mean agriculture economics rural sociology anthropology and so on so female farmers still have lots of issues with accessing land and credit so called old boys networks issues with child care and they also have to fulfill multiple roles on the farm which also increases the pressure right so the first economic study in 2020 found that women farmers on average earn 40 percent less than male farmers this is the framestead and paul study and they actually said that farming is one of the most unequal professions in the united states today in a recent study we looked at the characteristics of female farm shares at the at the county level and we found that a higher share of women farmers can be found near metropolitan areas where you have more horticulture small livestock and agri-tourism also when zen made that connection between female farmers and agri-tourism so from data and surveys we know that probably more women are engaged in agritourism i won't bore you with too much research i just want to talk a little bit about it so we don't know are women successful in doing agritourism so the evidence is kind of mixed there are only a handful of studies that look at the difference of gender and agritourism most of them point out that women generally earn less income than their male counterparts which is mainly based on the different goals they pursue the recent survey there's a recent survey study from savage published in 2020 and they conducted a survey just with women agritourism operators in north carolina and they looked at their attributes and found that younger and higher educated women farmers entered agritourism they also had a preference for sustainable agriculture practices and they had an interest in the overall well-being in their community and this is really a theme that goes throughout all of those studies however there's a caveat as always it's also been questioned if women working in value-added agriculture and rural tourism they can be seen as reinforcing this traditional gender role so um we're looking at typical women's work so by taking care of visitors are we just falling back into gender stereotypes a qualitative study by holly medal was conducted in 2016 and they looked at the elements of success for women and agritourism i won't read them but you can see there are many more reasons for women to start agritourism activity on their farm and it's not solely profit a research team led by lisa chase conducted an agritourism operator survey in the united states in 2019 and 20. excuse me right before the pandemic we closed the survey and here are the demographic results for the over 1400 responses there already have been a couple of presentations about the survey before so i just want to highlight a little bit the differences between the genders so more women responded and they were younger on average had less acreage and less experience than the male respondents but they were also more educated and we do acknowledge the caveat that women are generally more likely to answer surveys and they might not have been the sole agri-tourism operator when they answered so i'm just going to highlight some points here are the types of farm experiences that the survey respondents offered here we can see that more women offer educational experiences and entertainment and events and outdoor recreation and lodging but you can see definitely more education and more men gained income from unfarmed direct sales at least in our survey so what made our farmers start with agritourism our survey asked about the motivations and our respondents goals here we can see that for most goals the responses from men and women were very similar one category that stands out again is the educate the public about agriculture so women were more passionate about it the women that responded in the survey where 90 of the women they rated it as very important and an important goal so now the motivations are one thing but how how successful are these operators with these gold so this slide shows the percentage of respondents who felt that they're successful in achieving these goals um so the interesting thing here is that more mail respondents said that they increased traffic to on from direct sales and diversification and an increase in farm range revenue and you can see that in the responses where the female respondents exceed the male responses more women felt that they succeeded with their goal of educating the public about agriculture we also conducted some regression analysis that's a study lisa mentioned we're working on it and we found that women agritourism operators make significantly less profit than their male counterparts and they're less likely to assess themselves as being successful in increasing farm revenue so in conclusion while more research is needed as always it's evident that women in agritourism in the united states may pursue different goals when they start to offer agritourism activities on their farm and they don't solely focus on creating income um other more you know other goals educating the public and inter interaction with the public are very important as well and i'm almost at the end if you want to learn more practical info about women and agritourism in the united states i have two great resources for you uh there's some great work from north carolina state extension tourism they developed a couple of educational videos to increase women's recognitions as farmers and agri-tourism providers the link is down there and then there's another resource from us here at penn state extension we interviewed five women across pennsylvania and they shared their take on production human resource and legal issues and how they dealt with these and these videos are available on the penn state extension website i am now going to introduce our next speaker and i'm going to stop sharing my slides and amelia will actually share the slide for claudia so claudia phil arroyo is originally from peru she is a doctoral candidate in the department of parks recreation and tourism management at north carolina state university her current research focuses on craft beverage tourism but she also has worked extensively in agritourism and has some great publications out there check them out she has developed research projects on community-based tourism food tourism and agritourism in peru and the united states over to you claudia thanks claudia um so we heard uh claudia uh talk about um the role of women in agritourism in the us and although we can all agree that this i guess traditional rules and perspectives of women can be universal there are certainly some cultural aspects uh that might not translate um to developing countries such as peru um so we did a um a study in 2015 uh where we talked to seven different andean communities um located in peru um and we found out that um traditionally these are very uh we have men led communities like men are decision makers men are the ones that handle the money um although the work on itself is usually pretty um evenly distributed like they both form they both take care of everything but the man is usually the decision maker the one that voices opinions and and um sort of takes care of the family um but we also saw that when these families started uh offering agritourism activities whether it was you know textile or or doing some farming demonstrations uh weaving pottery whatever it was that they were started offering to tourists uh most women were the ones taking the lead on this which was very interesting they were the ones uh that started that showed the most interest in participating the ones that really encouraged their families to be part of it the ones that took care of it uh they're the ones that perhaps when community meetings may not have a whole lot of voice and do not make much decisions but when it came to tourism they're the ones participating in fairs are the ones talking to tourism providers they're the ones really taking the lead and making themselves hurt um that was sort of like on the political side we also see that they're also the ones that tend to take advantage of most of like the educational opportunities that come along with tourism for example traditionally on these communities um they mostly speak a traditional language which is called quechua um and only men are or men are in most cases though the only ones that speak spanish but with the introduction of um agritourism then a lot of these women were encouraged um to start learning in spanish for example and every time there is a training opportunity whether it's like learning to cook for tourists or learning alternative ways of doing handcrafts for example um they are the ones again that take advantage of or um are the ones taking these opportunities right and trying to learn and make the most out of them um and they also uh appear to to be much more participate participative in social spaces again usually the men would be the ones that um take the lead and participate in any sort of social gathering uh but with the introduction of tourists then women started to feel much more comfortable talking to outsiders and learning to speak to them and actually showing interest and learning about these foreigners and finally uh their participation in agritourism also allowed them to generate this extra income um that they could you know pretty much decide where it would go to which is not something that they would traditionally do as i mentioned men were usually the ones that manage the money and decide where it goes to and and this way they could you know use it for their kids or any treats or whatever additional things they would like and again this is this has improved sort of their standing and their empowerment and also their identification with their own culture right because they become they have become with with this empowerment and with this um uh practice and offering of agritourism they are becoming sort of like the ambassadors of their own culture because they are the ones that are truly realizing how important it is to get their their culture their traditions out there and they are very much interested and willing and and excited to share about it and sort of share its value with it and again it comes all from [Music] from women women are the ones uh that that are really being benefited by this um so that's just a little bit of what we found but this is what's a qualitative study so for sure there is a lot more that we could learn about on how these female roles are evolving and changing within these communities thank you wonderful thank you so much our next speaker is maria baria musharra who has 35 years of experience in sustainable tourism development and women empowerment across east africa she is an ashoka fellow and the founder and ceo of kabaddi uganda a not-for-profit community based tourism initiative maria received the award of excellent from the government of uganda in recognition of her outstanding contribution to the promotion of women tourism and women empowerment maria is a mentor and motivational speaker on issues of rural women and youth empowerment welcome maria and please go ahead thank you claudia my name is maria yamashira um from uganda east africa next please okay i'm the founder ceo of cobat uganda an award-winning ngo promoting tourism for sustainable road development and women empowerment across uganda i have over 30 years experience in sustainable tourism involvement and women empowerment across east africa over my course over tourism participation i identified a gap between mainstream tourism and local people their culture their environment and they were excluded from the opportunities within tourism so as i went along in tourism doing mainstream tourism to operations travel agency and all that kind of uh i i i i kept re realizing the gap so this inspired me to to to do something about it so i started my organization which is an occurrence for community-based tourism initiative to be able to mentor and also teach local people that tourism is good and it has potential to improve their life their lives if they could that's creating it but because of that gap as most of africa countries uh the afghan continent we inherited the the colonial uh type of of tourism where twelve was developed at the expense of of of local people where people were displaced and all these big lands were turned into national parks for the colonial you know people like officials to to to to to visit and and and and do while and to do safaris when they they had their visitors they would take them to national parks so that is what tourism was was and still is in a way that uganda's tourism or most of africa's tourism is wildlife based and people just come view game and go back so that is where that gap which i mentioned first came that the local people rural areas their culture their their way of life they were never part of the tourism picture so for me that's what made me realize that i needed to do something so in 1990 seven i i went to israel and i did a course in wrote words involvement as a tool for income generation and then that gave me an eye opener on how tourism is done besides wildlife and then i came back empowered and i started mobilizing our people i started uh advocating for for inclusion of of of of of of local people into the tourism marketplace i also started uh advocacy to to to in to leak tourism to other sectors of the economy because so that they could tourism can also be seen not purely just as for as as a leisure or as a as a product for for just going to national parks but once it's linked towards links to agriculture like we can know we can do every tourism once it's linked to education people can can can can do people who have got schools people can do tours people can you can link it to harris and you you have like health health tourism which was not understood so that's what i've been doing through my ngo which is a note for profit and that's how i became an affair because of being a social entrepreneur in that so back to women and my role in the permit of women i focused on women because of course they they they are disadvantaged at most levels and in in rural areas and then i i looked at tourism and then and then i looked at it the rural areas because like 90 percent of ugandans live on practice agriculture and most of them i do livestock keeping and crop growing and the majority of them are in the countryside they are subsistence farmers and women do all the work like cloudville said it's always the women who do the work and and and and helping the farm but then women don't own land so land is owned by men and the cash crops are for i think that's universal they the cash crops men take the the the money from the cash crops so now i what i saw in israel once i saw that there is need for people who are who who live in urban areas have a place where they can get away and and relax and and and with fresh air and eat food then i realized that was the entry point and i realized that women can have a an advantage over that because in africa women are they always do hospitality they host they make food they they entertain visitors they care they make handcrafted so the potential was there there was not they are not going to do something new so i i i zeroed on on on on the women especially women communities living along 12 circuits where it was easier for channeling the the the the travelers or twice working with the two operators to go to these villages so what i i i identified even even when i was young i could see my mother who was a typical rural woman she she worked with her hands in partnership with my with my with my father but we had cows catro and and then crops my mother was in charge of growing their crops we had a big banana plantation my mother worked with her hands she could do the agriculture part plant the harvest repair and then my my dad will sit with her but still my mother could do other things she was gifted she could weave baskets she could do pottery she could do beading she wouldn't she could she could do needle work so all those things she could she would do so that's why i under our home because we had food at our home people would come to buy food purchase food from uh buy milk from uh from from from from our farm buy you know potatoes you know banana plantain all those products so people came and then also because we had food we could host my parents could host like on festivities people would come and spend like christmas or whatever that so i realized that my mother was always hosting and entertaining and she she would give away those products the mats they watch as gifts so that's what i used when i started this journey of community tourism and you and and mobilizing and maintaining and skilling raw with women to participate in tourism but tapping into their culture their way of life they their environment and what they know because they didn't have to go to school we didn't have to teach them anything they didn't have to move from their areas they needed what we did or what my organization does is to train them into food presentation homestead hygiene sanitation uh cross-cultural exchange how to and and and that and that's it the good thing about uganda is that uganda most people in uganda can speak english because we are english is our is is our official language so even in in rural areas even touring primary schools they can interpret for their parents or the the local youth also i i put them in the in the in in in that i also in in in community tourism so that they could also become guides and interpreters and we developed like village walks where they could they would take people vistas along the giant so on these slides you could see how women have been for the longest time african women do crafts they do maths so these women in this village where my phone that they they do hard craft for home use for for for giving so they they the economic part of it was not there as as such so through mindset shift i told them if you can move do these baskets you can now do baskets which can become like a attractive to people who they can take them and then i told them to keep the story because i told them that because african crafts have stories and i think it's the story which sells so there are different uh uh handcrafts for different occasions so i said if you can do a mat you can draw a shopping bag you can do a sun heart so now we did various audition so now women started getting money as tourists would come they would have they would sell their hearts they would say they would sell them the the shopping baskets they'll tell them stories about their food then they would they would host so we started also homestead tourism also for for the women but all those things were in the villages then we also looked at the rural environment and landscapes beautiful landscapes as you as as you as you can see so basically that is what we use as far as part of empowerment because you know we are we we we do not even look at the at the impact was not only only on them on the income it was also on the welfare of the children on the family assets which increased on on on on on keeping traditional skills and indigenous knowledge in this picture on this slide you can see we have women room and who who who do pottery traditionally so we at kobachi my organize my organization we have holiday camps for children in urban schools so we bring them to these villages so that they can learn uh they can learn like pottery they can learn like weaving traditional dancing so this is what i do and when we mobilize women we also pass on the information about to about about harris about to you know like family planning about to saving each woman that we they have saving groups so they save part of what they what they buy if visitors come to the community and they say and they and they buy them the the baskets or what they they do the food they have a certain percentage at which they save so they have a saving growth and from the saving these women are able now to to to to give lunch to their children because in uganda we have universal primary education everyone goes to school but they don't provide them with with school lunch so now the women are able to provide lunch for their children they're able to provide sanitary towels for their girls to stay in school they and one of the things which i realized the impact at one occasion event when we are celebrating the the project in the village one woman stood up and said that because of the project because of her now getting money from from their craft shop her husband treated started treating her differently so it's also like one of the impact is deterring like you know domestic violence and also like keeping girls in school who used to not stay in school because of you know of the issue of sometimes people becoming empowered in that way and families starting looking at and also the two operators and and and started looking at it at rural areas as viable uh tourist destinations and they started also the ministry of tourism now is look is is is now into listening that we are going to start agritourism which i started with the farmers because in the farming farmers there are there are beekeepers they are there then there are there are people who are doing grapes they are doing wine in iraq but they were just doing it for sale but now visas are coming through us they are coming to see how it's done the story behind it and also to see the women who are empowered and because of all uganda we've had in a number of of of of war so men left maybe were joined the army or men died so there are a number of women headed household who are who are owning farms and that and and they they are setting like a good example in their communities they are empowered women they have their own money from long ago when i was a young girl as i said i saw the impact of a woman having her own money my mom had money of her own from the fro fro from the set of handcrafts from from hosting and from selling the props which were not the commercial ones which my father what what was in charging so as as we went to school my father would just give us school fees how much is school fees how much is pocket money or official one that's what you would give us but my mother because she had her own money she would give us extra money for for for you know for grab or she or she should so i saw the impact of that and then i saw that how my mother was was a strong person in the community how our home was when she was respected my father respected her so i grew up knowing that and that's what i've used so for me i'm advocating for agritourism because especially now with a covet we are no longer able to mobilize the women but they still have the skills once it's it's it's open the women will just start doing what they do because they don't have to move to cities they still they start they keep doing what they do in their own villages and i'm sure that that the travelers now once the people are vaccinated and they start like moving domestically people are going to come to rural areas where there is a fresh air where there's green landscape where there is organic food where they they can travel in groups and stay in these farming families who are practicing our literalism in groups so that's what i'm seeing and that's why i'm excited and and i advocating for agritourism i'm excited to be on this platform to learn how it's being done but in uganda agri tourism as far as i'm concerned as far as the mobilization is concerned it is the real thing for empowerment of not only of women but of local people and rural areas thank you maria that was wonderful and very passionate it really shines through thank you so much our next speaker is is elena yelenkovic and i know you're going to share your slides now elena is the executive director of wines of macedonia and an executive director of m6 training center and her role as director of m6 she designs different leadership programs and trainings many of which are focused on women and youth empowerment in macedonia she is a consultant for the rural coalition and focuses on the personal development of young people and women in rural areas and she was a project manager of a macedonian erner gastro tourism project which was financed by the world bank thank you elena please go ahead thank you accordion thank you everybody uh it is a pleasure to be part of this event today we were organized by university of vermont i had the privilege to visit vermont uh last month uh on invitation of usa embassy here in uh in the country we did discuss further possible cooperation and today i would like to let's say share with you uh what is going on in the country and in the region related to agritourism and women empowerment in this sector uh before we continue uh i would like to start the poll now uh can you answer the question do you know where the republic of north madison estonia is share the results please it's surprisingly uh yes but never been there 50 55 percent we have 35 percent that uh no never heard about where the country is uh so we are what are we facing here here it's a small country rarely somebody knows where uh where this country is and we will talk about tourism and especially agritourism or any kind of tourism so when you are facing a problem actually uh about brain building about uh when people don't know where the country is how can you expect the tourists to come so there is a a further discussion on that we will finish by the end of the presentation so we say here macedonia is in europe it's a language country it's really uh close to italy spain it's on the mediterranean we have population of 1.8 million people on the last census so it's pretty much close to uh many uh famous tourist destinations but it's very uh hard to get the tourists come here in the country uh what are we facing what are the challenges what are the potentials of building tourism especially agritourism in the country the main focus because i'm representing wine wines of macedonia as association that is uh actually uh covering all the biggest wineries in the country uh with the export more than 90 percent of the total wine expert in the country we are doing some projects related to promotion of the country and wine industry in the world you can see that if somebody knows about the wine making regions there are famous wine making regions and macedonia is with between the 30th and the 50th uh parallel so it's very adequate for uh wine production we said it's land of nature and cradle of culture uh being part of a land of part of the the world with a long history of uh where is the crossroad of the civilization uh there is a mixture of culture between byzantine slavic and ottoman influences so uh not speaking only about agri tourism we can always combine the cultural tourism uh within the any kind of tourism so we say macedonia is full of colors when you one of the main focuses on the projects that related to developing of tourism in the country's uh adventure tourism as well because we have a mountainous terrain more than 75 percent of the the countries uh covered in mountains there are 34 mountains with more than 2 000 meters altitude 43 lakes and four national parks and the climate is mediterranean and is suitable for healthy grapes uh you can see the some of the pictures showing colors of our country where agriculture plays an important role in macedonia in uh in its third largest sector after services and industry and vineyards area represent up to 10 percent of the total arable land with agriculture think still being the main economic activity in the rural regions however the small agricultural holdings still face challenge challenges to ensure quantity as well as to meet the food quality standards and food safety requirements making their products less competitive on the national and international market that is one of our challenges uh the agriculture contributes uh to more than 70 percent of the country gdp and employs significant percentage of the population uh so in the last year it was 18 of total employment but it's decreasing and it is now 42 percent of the total population and employment in the country uh which is pretty much higher than the european union so people related to agriculture in european union it's only for around four percent while here it's still higher uh and we have low productivity since i'm representing wines of macedonia one of the let's say the ambassadors of our country uh we have uh evidence of winemaking here since the 13th century before christ then it developed it it slowed down during the ottoman empire uh but now uh the winemakers are implementing newest technology and trends and uh wines from our country are beginning to be recognized and being side by side with the best wineries wine regions in the world as i mentioned the climate for developing of agriculture and wine tourism is very convenient we have more than 280 sunny days per year and mostly so far the agritourism in macedonia um is related to any kind of tourism mostly the people coming to the country are coming to see the oak ridge lake and oklahoma so-called european jerusalem with 300 more than 360 churches so that's part of the cultural tourism and uh due to mountains uh estimation most of the focus is adventure tourism but any kind of tourism tourists coming to the country is always sitting and enjoying the best food and the best wine from the region uh so combine this uh we see that the the agriculture and wine industry are our country ambassador and has a high potential so the so-called eno gastro tourism has a high potential for developing tourism in the country in general uh there are many investments in the last couple of years on this field there are european union world bank projects related to rural development some of them have focused on women in the rural areas development and the country support via subsidies so if it's a woman working in the rural area it's subsidized more and than the men so this uh actually this kind of actions and the deeper projects uh actually motivated the people uh to turn back to the nature let's say and uh that is why we are uh we can see good examples of many projects related to our topic today which is which are related to women empowerment i will go fast now there are many events that we can use uh to develop this sector so to increase the offer and create uh customer experience the first section is uh there are pictures of the wineries they are investment as i mentioned there is a world bank project uh that actually helped to develop different capacities in the country especially in the wine sector you can see that there is an enorgus trophers related to wine uh wineries uh offers but there are many events uh you saw that we have a big tradition of let's say cultural tradition so in the back uh days before christ there were wine and wine celebration days of the universe so we can use this kind of events actually happening always during the whole year celebrating wine some uh like for example same thrifund day uh when you can see that more and more wineries are actually welcoming their guests uh and uh actually promoting and combining this in august offer which means that maybe we can [Music] hope to promote the country not just for the regional tourists which are mainly focused on coming to the country but maybe for international tourists as well that is why uh our association in uh initiated granite world day we celebrated uh like malbec day or uh sauvignon d etc etc just to promote and establish the country as a wine country to promote it internationally that is why we are organizing field trips pre-trips uh when where we invite international wine media just to make this brand building and international promotions on the next slides you will see a couple of projects that were actually funded by different organizations such as swiss embassy um usm usa embassy uh giz from germany so many investors coming and in investing uh to develop these projects but you can see many different you can see the links so uh there are videos available uh but it's not organized so some of them are related only to support women women but to summarize at the end uh what we need to do is prioritize to define this sector agriculture or agritourism is a competitive advantage and make adequate actions so to sorry to have higher investments that are required to stimulate the restructure and improvement of the competitiveness of the agriculture through structural policy measures especially measures they support investment in new technology the infrastructure which is uh in order to improve the connectivity so you saw many examples here on the pictures but we are lacking of good infrastructure to connect the the places uh what we need is to define some regional project projects maybe because uh think about it you're coming you're coming for example from usa uh it's very hard to project that you will come to see only uh north macedonia and this couple of places you would most probably want to see serbia bulgaria albania to go to the sea to greece et cetera to combine it so we need to define some regional projects to broaden up the perspectives uh in order to uh to build this uh sector uh to be uh let's say more economic to drive economic development of the country uh then um what is needed uh we need an education in terms of motivating uh people in the rural areas especially women entrepreneurs uh to educate them to have hospitality skills to to be able to have international market marketing to promote and attract visitors and at the end the country brand building so macedonia as you saw it's very suitable for creating artisan food and develop develop the country and the whole sector and the whole region as well maybe together to attract foreign tourists not just regional tourists come here to to the country and i hope that next time on our poll we will have more people that were there or knows where the country is thanks elena thank you that was a great presentation um we have a couple of questions we don't have much time we have about 10 minutes for for q a so i'll i'll try to push it forward there's one question um maylene asked so i don't really know who's meant by this can carla please comment on whether there is an intergenerational challenge when passing down traditional skills and farming techniques to younger women and are they taking up the mantle to keep traditional craft and other agritourism experiences since we have two claudias i think we're just going to share this one claudia would you like to go ahead sure um actually there there there's always these challenges as uh younger generations are exposed to other um types of societies big cities uh they tend to want to leave behind this all these um heritage that they have but what we um witness in these communities is actually that the growth of agritourism the i guess influx of of of tourists has actually motivated these younger generations to be more interested um and women all the generations also make i guess i don't want to say they didn't make the effort but but if they weren't interested in it they just you know let it go but this is something that has encouraged both sides to be more um [Music] involved i guess and and making sure that this um traditions and all this cultural heritage gets passed down i know that in some cases it has even some traditions that were completely um ignored for a while like there's i know there's one of the communities in pune that do these really intricately decorated hats for some celebrations stop doing it because their their kids were not interested they were not really celebrating that way they would all wear you know the regular everyday clothes for these festivities and as um agri-tourism started picking up and they started incorporating more cultural elements to it they they saw how people were in awe of how cool these cats were and so they started using them again making them again and teaching their children how to make them as well thanks and uh in case for the united states as i mentioned we're going to share the question um we're still um analyzing the the national survey with clemson university so laurie dickes and olivia mcmarlin and uh what they found uh when looking at the the comments that that producers gave was that women are really interested in keeping the legacy of the family farm and this is why they're engaging in agritourism so there is this interest to pass it down and it's actually made possible through agritourism we have another question for maria from fenyang what are the challenges to scale up agritourism in uganda including regulatory issues and how supportive the government is to use agritourism as instrument for rural development and gender equality and this is the first question it's a two-part question and then the second one it sounds very detailed do you plan to collaborate with eco village network in the region okay for public tourism like i said at the beginning is a is something new which which has come up which the the minister of tourism is is now like a getting interested in uh because of you know people are coming up with with farm farms people like farmers like people who are doing coffee who are doing tea who are doing like a pineapples big farm so people just come to to to learn how they are doing it and as they come to land they come in groups even like university students who are what bring agriculture they come to learn to see what's happening on those farms then for like our pirate farms where because of the mentoring we do we said that if people come to for educational purposes to this farm they're about certain people they have come you would they would you they they would see what is what happens and whatever they would need like food they would need like a drink they would need to to use the washroom they would need to take away something maybe some some of the food so when we started doing that and then in the meetings we go to and also people share having interests those those those visitors who come and go back to report said the minister of twelve the two they their co-operators so that's how it has now come and now also the government is involved in in involvement of rural areas in people supporting small farming families to to to to to to grow food and also to to to to to for for eating and but at the same time for for income generation so people are starting to do smart farming and as they do that kind of smart farming farming becomes interesting and then also younger people because there have been there's a lot of unemployment in in in uganda of university graduates because they have been looking at agriculture as something which is local which is when you go back to the land but with average tourism or with smart farming and ugly business it's now starting to look interesting also to interesting young young people through very addition so because there are farmers now who do livestock they do for their daily production so now the younger people are coming in to add value to start doing like yogurt like cheese like so now it becomes family becomes attractive and rural people as people come as as as people get more income and improve on their on the first of their home states now they attract visitors so what we've been advocating for now becomes meaningful so now the ministry of tourism has come up and put agriculturalism on the forefront of among the the projects they are they are what they're they're promoting um like three months ago our organization signed an mou with the mission of tourism to one of the things we are going to do together is to promote agriculturalism skilling and mentoring and you know the developing towards mutualism enterprise village enterprises that kind of with support from the minister of tourism so that is what is happening and and that's what what what i can say what the government coming up with the good politic policies of rural development but also which link up with tourism development which are favorable thank you so much maria and i'm so sorry there's so many more questions in the una um but we just have to cut it off here because lisa would like to wrap it up at the end i would like to thank all the speakers thank you so much for sharing your uh your insights thank you thank you claudia thanks to our speakers and thanks to everyone for joining today and putting great questions into the chat and also and q a and also submitting them in advance um through registration we didn't get to all of the questions but we will send out an email afterwards that we'll have the resources the links that we've been putting in chat as our panelists have been speaking and also all of our panelists today have agreed to share their contact info their email um and social media channels so we'll send all that in an email later this week we want to keep this conversation going with all of you not only on this topic but on other aspects of agritourism as well as you can see on the slide on january 18th we'll be talking about booking sites for farm stays and experiences how to reach your target market registration is already open for that and posted on our website agritourismworkshop.com hopefully you'll get our emails um with more information and we're continuing to plan ahead for the next several months so keep an eye on our website and stay in touch enjoy the upcoming holidays and we hope to see all of you next month thanks so much everyone

2021-12-12 13:23

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