Agritourism Definitions and Standards around the World
my name is lisa chase and i'm a professor at university of vermont extension and i'm the director of the vermont tourism research center and i want to welcome you to the 11th virtual agritourism gathering and our topic today is agritourism definitions and standards around the globe about a year and a half ago we developed this series as a way to stay connected during the pandemic we're currently planning ahead through the spring all the way through may with at least one virtual gathering each month leading up to the international workshop on agritourism which will take place in vermont in person august 30 to september 1st of 2022 we know that not everyone is going to be able to travel to vermont um this summer so we will also have virtual components for that conference we're still figuring out exactly what that's going to look like but i want to let everyone here know that the call for proposals to present is open now and it will stay open through november 30th we know there is a lot of uncertainty around travel and it can be very hard to plan ahead for the summer and we don't want that uncertainty to get in the way of your decision about submitting a proposal to present at the vermont conference this august so when you submit a proposal there's a new question this year which is you can select whether you would like to present in person online or you can say i have no idea you can check a box that says i'm not sure yet becky's gonna put the link to the call for proposals into the chat box so anyone who wants more information um can click on that link which is um the same place our recordings and registration is for this for the webinar series also i want to emphasize that we are looking for all different perspectives all different voices to be shared at the vermont conference you've seen at these virtual agritourism gatherings that we have a really good mix of farmers different kinds of producers researchers extension service providers tourism professionals non-profit organizations educators government officials a whole range of perspectives and voices related to agritourism that range that mix is what we were looking for at the vermont conference because we think it is incredibly important for all of us working within the agritourism field to work together on these issues questions best practices and resources so if you are working with agritourism in some way shape or form please consider submitting a proposal to share your experiences your research whatever it is that you're doing related to agritourism at the conference in vermont talking about a mix a mix of um people coming together let's take a look now and see who is here with us i'm going to launch a poll so you should see on your screen a box that says describe yourself check all that apply and you can check as many hats as you wear i know that many of you wear many hats and it's been interesting over this um course of the webinars to see how this mix has changed some webinars are primarily producers other webinars are primarily educators and we'll we'll see how this one shakes out and um we also welcome you to introduce yourself in chat so if you are willing to share who you are not just in the poll but also let us know your name um what country or state or province you're from and what you do there whether you have an agritourism operation yourself or you're with a university or an institution or government if you're willing to type into chat introduce yourself and make sure when you type into chat that you check everyone if you're willing to share your response with everyone otherwise i think the default is host and panelists and we'll get to see who you are but not everybody else will will get to see we the the as a host i got to see who registered and as of a few hours ago we had 271 people registered for from over 30 countries so i thought that was pretty impressive for a topic that some people felt was a little dry agritourism definition and standards i find it to be an absolutely thrilling and even contentious topic but not everyone sees it that way i'm going to end the poll now and i'm sharing results so let's see we have a different mix this time in that we have more researchers than usual 31 researchers um about a quarter non-profit government and agent and government agencies and educators and farmer ranchers really great mix um and quite a few extension service providers business owners and other okay i'm going to stop sharing now and we've got one more poll and this poll is specific for today's topic the question is do you have a clear definition of agritourism for your work or in your region whether it's your state or your country or your village or your town and you've got we've got a few few choices here there's the simple yes or no then not sure and then my answer is too long for a poll that that would be my answer i would i would or i might i actually let you you didn't have to choose one you could check all that apply because i was like hmm i might have to check all four of those there so i want to invite everyone um just like introducing yourselves in chat please take a moment if you have a definition go to chat now and make sure you click everyone if you're willing to share with everyone and let us know where your what your definition is and where it's from we will save chad we and we are you know we're really interested to see how these different v how these definitions vary um in different places so we would love to see what your definition is and if your answer is too long for a poll type in chat or no not sure everyone can feel free to share with us what you think your definition is or if you have no idea i'm ending the poll now i'm sharing results and it looks like this is impressive almost half 46 have a definition about a third do not about 20 are not sure and then we've got a few my answer is too long for a poll so thank you to everyone who's been sharing your sharing who you are and also sharing your definitions i know chat gets a little crazy um so we'll we we save the chat and we'll sort through that afterwards um and if you have questions at any time rather than putting them in chat go to the q a box and put your questions in q a because that way we can keep the questions separate from the chat the tech gets to be a lot to look through after a while we're now going to move on to the next slide and i want to mention this is so this is a map of the u.s and this is the status of laws for agritourism in the us and as you can see we got a bunch of colors here gray means there's no agritourism law currently in place the green means there is an agritourism law the oranges there are recently there's recently proposed legislation but not existing laws and the blue is there's proposed legislation and existing laws so here i'm just showing you the range in the status of laws in the u.s not even showing you the content of those laws and i put up this map just to show there's incr there's quite a bit of variability among the definition of agritourism throughout the u.s
state by state sometimes but also it can be county by county town by town there can be different rules regulations and policies and it can be really confusing for people to navigate could i have the next slide please um since we didn't come up since we haven't in the u.s come up with a clear precise definition for agritourism that everyone agrees on what we did come up with is a conceptual framework that outlines areas of agreement and disagreement i'm going to come back to this conceptual framework a little later on but first i want to introduce our panelists today each of them will briefly share their definitions in their respective countries and then we'll have time for q a and as always feel free to type into chat and q a at any time throughout no need to hold your questions today we are going to hear first from dr sharon flanagan she is a postdoctoral researcher at the james hutton institute in aberdeen scotland she is a qualitative social scientist with a background in rural topics primarily focusing on aspects of agriculture tourism and networking in rural areas dr flanagan completed her phd on developing and applying a framework for agritourism way back in 2011 and she published what i believe is the first agritourism typology in 2010. that is one of the reasons why we wanted her to kick us off today is because i believe she was the first person to publish a typology of agritourism and if that's not correct somebody type into chat and let us know what else is out there what was published before 2010. agritourism remains a topic of interest for sharon at a time when the sector has begun to develop rapidly in scotland in collaboration with organizations such as go rural and scottish agritourism and now sharon i'll turn it over to you so hi um this has introduced me um already but as i said shannon flanagan i'm from aberdeen in scotland um at the jamestown institute and i've got a couple of pictures up there one of them showing that i'm not just an agritourism researcher but i'm also believe myself to be an agritourism consumer a couple of wee boys who are all too happy to go out into the countryside and pet animals and get mucky and and there's a nice few pictures in there just for a wee extra side interest um so yeah so lisa has introduced also this paper which i wrote as part of my phd i started a phd in 2008 and it was initially my intention to investigate sustainable agritourism in scotland um and when i went to the literature at that time it was um a little bit messy there's a range of definitions a range of terms all being used um kind of interchangeably sometimes so what what i decided to do and what became the focus of the first paper of my uh phd research was to was aimed to support better understanding i suppose of agritourism by proposing a framework of types um and at that time it was a case of we'll see what we start with and see what conversation comes from there so this is what we started with um so included five types which i've got on the spot on the slide there based on three key discriminators and the first of those being whether or not it's based on a working farm the second whether it um the visitor comes in contact with agricultural activity on the farm and the third being if they do come in direct contact whether there's a that interaction is could be classed as um authentic agricultural activity that i'm coming in contact with so yeah so the topology was focused on the activity or the experience as opposed to the provider um recognizing that that experience is that the intersection between the provider and the consumer it's it one doesn't happen without the other so um that was kind of the the focus in that respect um so what's interesting and there's been a subject of much debate um since then i mean as lisa said this was 10 years ago this was published um so that the inclusion of non-working farm products and within the typology so it's not my place to make a value judgment whether or not that um is the case um but to my mind the literature did include some products which were based off farm so that was why it was included anyway the other end of the spectrum the authenticity side of things again much debate which i'm sure will come onto at some point as well um so the definition and um application of authenticity is a concept but then agritourism is the kind of the crux there so here it refers to the manner of interaction with agriculture and so for many people it could also be applied to the the setting so first for many people it could be a case of is it based on a working farm that's the market of authentic authentic setting so um yeah so in the years since this paper was published i'm confident the understanding's moved on considerably and um i constantly get google scholar alerts saying that the the paper has been referred to um and yeah it's a place to start a conversation not everybody will agree with it some people will seem some people won't but i think the conversation's what's what's important um and i think from from my perspective i think there's room for further refinement of this this technology and updating but i still believe it's a broad concept um and it does include multiple types to my mind and so it depended on the nature of what's happening what the activity is so maybe not on the next slide realize i'm talking for too long but um amelia can um sniff on so i wanted to use this opportunity also to show some of the wonderful agritourism offerings that we have in scotland um i was actually at the scottish agritourism conference last week at this time and some of the examples on this slide here represent products that some of the speakers at that conference have on offer um including accommodation food and drink opportunities to interact with farming people places practices um a huge huge range and one of the really interesting statements that was discussed by speakers at the conference last week was whether or not agritourism should even be thought of as diversification or simply as an extension of agricultural activity on farms and for many people now it's becoming increasingly thought of as the shop front for agriculture and food production and connection between the people people or consumers and the places where their food's produced um i'm moving up on the next slide the final one from me just now and the first thing to point out um for me in scotland anyway is that the term agritourism is not not only known in scotland and 10 years ago when i was doing my phd i would phone people up and say i would like to talk about agators and they'd go what's agritourism so to me that's a huge step forward we can talk about agritourism now in a different way we've also got an official body representing the sector in scotland a new strategy outlining a shared vision and action plan there's an annual data collection mechanism started um and an underpinning definition which was developed by industry leaders and emphasizes the importance of farming and food production as key ingredients upon which everything else is based um so you can see the definition on the slide here in scotland we consider agatusm to include tourism or leisure on a working farm cross or a state which produces food and the pictures at the bottom there this slide is captured from the scottish aggie tourism website um and that shows some of the types of products that we have on offer again um so i'll need to stop talking but it's hard to overestimate the extent of progress that's occurred in scottish agriculturism in the last 10 years and it's my belief that a combination of leadership community and identity building based on the usp of um captured in the definition here has been fundamental and it underpins an ethos in scotland in a marketing um element to it as well with the you can see that we've what we call the funky coup that's the cow with the the multi-colored wellington boots on and it's also used as um kind of a marker of quality and authenticity as it's pushed out by providers in scotland um and just as close but i think the scottish case represents as evidence that the the core of agatusa might be comparable internationally but the context is also really important and countries should act on that basis and so for me having this contextual definition in scotland is um really important in order to support the cycle of sexual development and also data collection so we know what we're actually measuring to take the sector forward in scotland and i'm going to start talking there and apologize for talking too long no apology necessary that was excellent way to start us off sharon our next speaker is a fourth generation farmer and first generation entrepreneur mr pandering taware is from a small village in baramati taluka his childhood was immersed fully in farming and his father's desire was that mr ponderon should study agriculture and work for the betterment of the farming communities in india but instead he studied commun computer science and he worked in hospit the hospitality industry for 20 years in 2003 he married agriculture with tourism and launched agri-tourism development corporation with a model agritourism center in barramati after running agritourism operations successfully for three years he took on training and skill development in agritourism for other farmers as of a year ago march 2020 he had replicated this idea of agritourism on 628 farms in more than 300 villages and the impacts are were huge generating 55 million indian rupees to farmers families and creating over 7 000 jobs for women and youth in the rural communities welcome mr ponderon toari thank you thank you so much lisa for this wonderful introduction and my uh namaste to all my co-finalists and good morning good afternoon all of you from various parts of the world uh as you all know that india is known as land of villages and more than 77 farmers live in 5.5 lakh villages in india and
that is why it is a true culture of india next slide please and this is what we define agritourism in india because it is all range of activities by the farmers family to attract urban tourists to have to have an experience the farm on the three tripoli formula that is explore the village explore the culture of the village and the tradition of the villages and also experience the actual working on the farm to know where your food is coming from and third is get enriched about new things on the farm and that is how we feel that the agritourism in india depends on three most important factors that is the farmer has to have something to see for the tourist that is various crops and various other things on the farm actual farm the tourist has to have something to do on the farm so that he can participate in the activities he can you know uh commit the cows drive the bullet card right the tractors work in the actual farm and also help and see the farmers market in the villages and third thing important thing is the tourist has to have something to buy on the farm that is the fresh agricultural produce the crops handicrafts made by the artisans in the villages uh the the products handmade homemade products by the self-help group in the women's in the villages and that is how it all depends on something to see something to do and something to buy on the farm and i think this defines that whole of activities and facilities by the farmer's family to attract the urban tourists to generate the income the substantial or the what i'm saying is the additional income on the farm thank you so much thank you so much very very exciting to hear about agri-tourism in india we are now going to move to south africa jackie taylor is a passionate communicator marketer and entrepreneur she has over 30 years communications and marketing experience in the agricultural and tourism industries both nationally and internationally jackie has succeeded in developing domestic and international marketing strategies for a number of destinations in south africa and around the globe her focus is currently on sustainable agritourism ecotourism and rural tourism initiatives she is the founder and managing director of rural tourism africa and agri-tourism africa welcome jackie thank you very much lisa i'd like to say hello to everyone and i think pandarang and i share a lot of commonalities in regards to agri-tourism i think and what i found in 2016 when i started off i spent two years speaking to farmers and i wanted to see what was possible and what was not what the concerns were and a lot of that i've actually written about and it is on the website so i know some of the questions that were asked were about uh business plans profitability uh how do we go about things and those were questions that i did actually write about an answer i think it's very important people who come to africa are looking for an authentic experience you know i i haven't met anyone who you know you might will go to a zoo wherever you are in europe or america um if you're coming to africa you actually want to see a real or have a very real experience and so i i grew up on a farm and it was a working farm and i i knew quite a bit about farming because i had a dad who insisted that i actually farm and get up and there was none of this boys girl stuff i had my brother with me we all did everything so it was a good background for me to have was good to understand farmers a lot of them are introverts or they've chosen agriculture for a specific reason but i think it's really important to note that africa is an agricultural continent south africa we we don't have any subsidies uh for agriculture um or tourism and and our farms have to be profitable they they are farms first and then there are tourism destinations and we have very strict laws about uh farms that cannot be turns into what i call theme parks they've got to be farms and they've got to produce produce and that helps with the food security and other issues so that is important to note that the every tourism side of the business is real farming it's not um yeah you not you you know that's that photograph there it's it's a fully immersive type of experience and people love that you know there's been since uh we opened up our boards in july we've had an 82 increase in rural tourism in southern africa so you can see that people really want to connect reconnect and i think also just to you know that the most common question is i'm really tired of my children chatty i just want to go and then i hear all about it and then i say well just go to a farm because you know they can run around and do whatever and you can just rest or stare up at whatever the stars and the farmer will take care of them so a lot of our farmers are very friendly i've never met an unfriendly farmer and farmer community is very friendly and the experiences as panderang actually mentioned and i've got my little sort of ostrich egg here i've got to tell you the story briefly so i get an invitation and i've got two teenage daughters and they teenagers right so we go to the farm and the farmer says to me right girls you're going to be up at 5 30 tomorrow morning and you are going to be working until 8 30 in the morning well the farmer put them on the back of his bucky or his i'm not sure what you call it but it's sort of like a farm vehicle it was freezing cold and that i was invited inside the bucky so it's nice and warm and the farmer took the girls through all the farming activities and one of those was collecting ostrich shapes and so at 8 30 by the time they were totally grumpy because they'd done everything from branding sheep to to whatever he said to the girls okay so you collected ostriches right so now we go to show you how you can make an omelette but we're not going to crack the egg the egg's actually very hard um we're going to show you how to put a pin in and then we're going to cut a hole and then you can make an omelet and you know they they are now 18 they're now university and whatever but that experience on the farm they will never forget and they spoke to everybody about that and that is the authentic experience that we're talking about in in agri-tourism one last thing i know i'm talking too long but one last thing i do want to mention is that we have game farms farmers who farm with game that is not a game reserve okay so when we talk about ecotourism ecotourism forms part of agri-tourism not the game reserves we're talking about the farmers who farm with game and yes you you know the various things you eat can eat uh various type of um different animals but also there's leather and other businesses that game farmers do so it's really important that when we talk about agri-tourism that we include the broader perspective and i'm certainly not um going to go into areas in south africa or anywhere else in africa and tell them as in the farmers and the rural communities or on the farm what to do it's a natural um evolution and i think you know with rural tourism people say well how jackie are you integrating rural tourism uh with agritourism well rural tourism is an easy way to explain to target markets consumers what agri-tourism actually is and farmers in africa so when you talk about coming to a farm in africa you can't see wildlife as well so that is you know we have a lot of legislation in terms of protecting the farms we cannot just take farm workers or communities and say well we're going to make this an agri-tourism cottage we we're not allowed uh to actually do that so the workers they're on the farms and and they they are strict labor laws about that so you know when when i look at this there's not a day and i work seven days a week i love what i do and i know you know the people that i talk to i have so many friends and thank you thomas for arranging the first agri-tourism conference in italy i have so many people i'm just inundated with people who want to come to africa they want to work on game forms they want to participate they it's just amazing so yes i better shut up now because i can see lisa is going to say that's me thank you so much jackie i could listen to you all day but i do want to give uh dr tomas strifenida an opportunity to speak as well he has been working as the head of the institute for regional development of urac research in bolzano italy since 2009 in his research he deals with agricultural and socioeconomic transformation processes in rural areas focusing especially on mountain regions in 2018 he organized the first world congress on agritourism and that is where i met jackie and ponderon and tomas and many others who i've stayed in touch with and since then dr streifeniter has been actively involved in research concerning agritourism definitions and standards dr streifeniter i'm handing it over to you okay thank you very much lisa and hello and good afternoon to everybody it's really amazing to see you again could we have this slide a little bit later please because i i want to focus on some other aspects so i uh or no slide or black screen or yeah um yeah i want to to structure my short intervention based on three points goals complementarity and what is agreed to is and what is not algorithm so um starting with the goals obviously my my my presentation is inspired and based on the situation in italy italy was somehow the pioneer and still somehow the international leader of agritourism started in 1885 with a known national law and we have about 25 000 agri tourism businesses in in italy until now so we have a quite high share of of farms providing providing and offering agri-tourism so concerning the guards there are two aspects one is that aggro tourism is an inter additional supplementary activity on the farm this means that we have a contribution of equity activities from a in a certain amount a certain extent from a time and income perspective and if we talk of about [Music] supplementary additional activity this means that it should be at least left less than the half of the amount of time and income from my understanding the other point regarding goats is the valuation of the assets of the farm we already heard that by the other speakers so it's experiencing farming it's the restoration of building heritage is enjoying typical quality food enjoying culture and food education so this means we have based on these goals a certain experiencing sector and interaction that is inherent this is integrative part of our witness the second point is the complementarity between the activities if if someone introduces tourism on a farm this means that somehow the activity should be in complete in in a complementary way to the those activities already present the farming activities on the farm and as jackie said my philosophy is first farms and then two reasons this is why i called my publication agritourism first and uh or far first aggregate agriculture and then tourism so we have to realize a predominance of agriculture from a temporal timely perspective on the farm this means and this is in the case in italy that somehow it should be monitored and and and and defined and this is done by a certain limit of beds and seeds present on the farm um the other aspects that we need some specific limits regarding agriculture because obviously if you want to go to a farm and experience agriculture you have to really experience agriculture and not only something that is maybe agriculture but it's only apparently agriculture but not real agriculture i don't want to focus so much on the discussion on income but i think in some regions we always also have to think about not only the timely aspect or the temporal aspects but only the income aspect because some some businesses do earn very well with agritourism and now we i come to the slide please um what is agritours and what this is not and this is somehow based my my reflections were based at the at the time and i partially published this paper in 2016 based on the work done by sharon and and her colleagues and i call it the concept of authentic agritourism based on some and there's the link to the work of of lisa and her colleagues and dave uh on core and peripheral activities so um you see here i call it i make a distinction within the framework of tourism in rural areas i don't call it rule tourism because already rule tourism means a certain characteristic of something and many of us in rural areas are for my from my point of view not rural office so this is why i call it tourism rural areas and i make the distinction between authentic authentic agritourism and counter-side tourism and authentic agritourism and this is based on what already was said is very much an exclusive happening occurring on a working farm this means that the farmer is really a farmer and the farm is somehow registered in a in a certain list and has a certain limit a certain threshold one minimum requirements regarding agricultural area and so on then the structures and activities correspond to the setting of an active farm this is very important so all the framework or the infrastructure on the farm is really the infrastructure the facilities of a farm the agricultural activities as i said before predominant the agritouristic ones the accommodation and here we have already some different opinions the accommodation occurs in farm buildings often we see that that it's not possible and we have separate buildings to host the guests and so on but generally i think that this is a specific specific point and unique selling position also as a unique selling point compared to other offers that the horse can be hosted in uh the guests can be hosted sorry the guests can be hosted in in farm buildings and then we have obviously in enabled interaction and this is very important uh we have what what jackie said no this is the the absolute uh uh advantage our great housing can offer to the to the guests that we have a real experience of of the farming activities and so on and compared to other offers um in the countryside tourism so we have tourism on a non-working farm obviously and then we have sorts of commercial what i call commercial agritourism and this is also based on work previous work done by other researchers and this means that we have tourism on a working farm that is very much characterized by hotel-like touristic facilities and accommodation structures that may be decoupled be even decoupled from the farmhouse so this year my point is that we have to avoid to become too touristic and too too hotel like this means also that we have to avoid to stage too much activities for touristic purposes it should be really an experience on a farm as experience the daily life of a farm without too much staging and then we have finally a visit to traditional cultural export and other events in rural areas and we have other points that are volunteer work and roofing farms the worldwide opportunities on organic farms these are active working opportunities on farms but these are not part of tourism my my my opinion so again here we have we may have active active participation of the guests on the farm but the question here is again to be to which extent and in which and in which in which manner so um we should really think about the unique selling point of our great tourism compared to other offers in rural areas and i think also only buying products i'm not very content so it should be more than direct marketing of agriculture products it should be real experience on a farm and it should at least be tasting and enjoying agricultural products on the farm and this is why we need certain limits because the share of this enjoying agricultural owned agriculture products it's at least in italy is quite here we have 60 to 80 percent of the products that are offered for tasting and catering on the farm should come from their own farm or at least from the farms in the surrounding this means that obviously the farm should have certain yeah products a variety and amount of products available okay these are some points for my site thank you thank you very much tomas and and thanks to all of you i'm gonna actually amelia could you uh keep those slides up um now that you've heard perspectives from india south africa and italy i want to share some ideas from the u.s here we've got another multicolored map of the u.s again making the point that our definitions in the u.s are are all over the place that's not to say there aren't definitions some states some counties some regions have specific and clear definitions but we don't have consistency this is a map of enactment of civil liability laws throughout the u.s and the different colors represent the timing where some states have these laws in place others don't you know one of the things we've seen in vermont and in other states is sometimes the way agritourism is divine defined in the civil liability law may be different than the way it's divided the way that it is um described in another law so it gets confusing and can i have the next slide amelia since while we do have a variety of definitions in the u.s
we don't have one single agreed-upon definition a multi-state team of extension colleagues created this conceptual framework and the idea here is to show what we agree on and what we disagree on so the agreement and from what i'm hearing from my colleagues in in other countries is i think i think this is pretty broad agreement outside of the us as well where the core is on-farm experiences and product sales that are closely tied to agriculture and that take place on a working agricultural facility in vermont it's really easy i can just say a working farm or vineyard um or cidery um but especially when we're talking globally i saw sharon had you know um crofts and and different languages so to say it's it's working lands and it could be a farm a ranch a vineyard a cidery an orchard as jackie mentioned game farms um the point is there's production happening there oh and i'm gonna say that folks in aquaculture oyster farms for example are saying hold on you know we're we're doing this too and it's basically the same thing um you know happening in the water and we want to be a part of this too so um the so the core is that experience in sales that are connected to production and they're taking place on the production the place where the production is happening the peripheral tears the outside tears are where there's conflict so that's where it may be taking place on the farm on the area of agricultural production but it's not it's not deeply connected to agriculture so could be you know a wedding that's there using the farm as a backdrop not really using the local farm products or or music or other events on farms or it's taking place off a farm so a farmer's market or an agricultural fare that may actually be all about agriculture but it's not taking place on the working farm those are the areas of contention of disagreement that we see in the u.s um regardless of whether it's core or peripheral we do have a variety of overlapping categories of education hospitality outdoor recreation entertainment and direct sales of agricultural products and with that amelia let's um stop sharing slides and move um directly to the q a and we've got we've got a ton of great questions in the q a and i came prepared with a list of questions from registration so we're probably not going to get through them all in the next 10 minutes but um let's see what we can get through and then let's make sure we keep this conversation going afterwards i want to start with the question about food i'm going to pull up the question and let's see august wrote and i believe this is while uh dr flanagan was speaking i'm curious why the average tourism definition insists on including produces food as an essential component so why don't we start with sharon to address that and then i'll open that to the rest of the panelists as well so i should start by saying this is not my definition this is the definition that has been developed in scotland um by a group of industry leaders and in preparation for i suppose uh an opening gambit for what what is going to mean in scotland i think the the main idea of it is to ensure that connection between the agricultures the ethos the agriculture and the tourism connection and food production being the main um connection and also the fact that the food in many cases being produced and consumed in the same place whether it be taking it from that farm off the farm or get local farms coming together and i understand that um the the potential exclusion of of other um things that are produced in france i'm sure that those wouldn't be necessarily excluded and not to my mind anyway but i think it might be something i need to go and discuss further with my um industry colleagues in scotland to to try and pick that apart i think that's a really valid point so i'll pass on to somebody else for their perspective thank you sharon um do any of the other panelists want to address that go ahead tomas yeah i think yeah this is a quite good question because um obviously most of the definitions include somehow the aspect of of catering and tasting agricultural products on the farm and at least in italy this is very common and this is one of the unique selling points of agri-tourism but i think the question is right and i think it is um despite this huge relevance of catering in food on the farm bees still have at least what i know according to the statistic 20 of farms that only provide accommodation in italy this means they are defined as agri-tourism establishments without providing food even even breakfast and so on so in this case we already in italy we have this case that we define agritourism as a business without providing food and i think very important is the aspect of the extent of the stay the extent and quality of the stay on the farm so if you don't have products that you can not simply as i said before not simply buy but taste and and eat and enjoy on the farm i think this is very important because the other thing is direct marketing of farms this is different and is in my opinion two two to two less to to to be qualified as agritourism but this is my opinion uh so i think the qualitative and quantitative aspect of the extent of the stay on a farm is very important and food can be an instrument to to guarantee somehow the experience and experiencing farm agritourism on a farm so so but it could be also without products yeah at the end but at least this would mean that we have a sort of accommodation that we have a sort of a farm tour or inter a qualitative and quantitative extent of the stay of the farm in a certain way in the framework of farm tours or interaction on the farm go ahead jackie yeah i i think it really does depend in south africa we have a number of different types of climates and so you're not going to go to a farm and have a cow a couple of chickens whatever because the farming is the main business uh you could be farming with grain you could be farming with apples so that doesn't actually automatically mean that you're going to have a nice little plate of food and there's going to be a little tomato and whatever the the climate zones are so different uh and agriculture certainly is the focus so you know yes you'll get homemade bread and whatever but it doesn't mean you go to get a plate of food um that's sort of just how it is i'll jump in with a perspective from the u.s um and say that um in the u.s while there's a lot of um disagreement i think there would be general agreement that it doesn't just have to be food for example um you cut christmas trees is a big activity that starts in a few weeks um and goes all the way through um and fiber production i can think of this beautiful farm in vermont grandview farm run by um kim goodling and there you know people learn to share the sheep and then she teaches them how to spin on the wool into fiber and you know goes through the whole process where you end up making these amazing products and so it's not food it's fiber and and there's other you know non-food agricultural products and experiences so all i'll say in the u.s i think it's much broader um
than food i'm now gonna jump to another question and we have we have so many that it's actually really hard to choose from these questions but i'm going to move to one that is um what is the somebody asked early on what is the difference between farm tourism and agritourism pandarang tawari would you like to take a shot at that question at that question i think uh farm tourism and agritourism is one and the same because the tourism experience is is happening on the working farm uh probably in farm tourism uh he or she might be thinking that like how dr thomas said that the experience on the working farm and the managed stage managed experiences uh for the for the for the tourists but i think uh the farm tourism uh r is an agritourism or agri-tourism is one and the same thing any other panelists want to weigh in yeah i agree i think they're synonyms in a lot of ways i think there's um yeah used interchangeably and i think depending on um i mentioned in my introduction that 10 years ago the term agritourism wasn't even really spoken certainly here in scotland very much but farm tourism was a bit more recognized so when i was speaking to people you could kind of use those terms and they would they would put them together in their mind as being something that they could make sense of and so i think it could kind of comes down to personal preference possibly but again my my opinion rather than an official one if that makes sense other thoughts from panelists or i'll jump in i'll jump in to say that i think this you know this whole topic of definition of standards we're using agritourism in part because um this webinar series is a follow-up to the first world congress on agritourism and you know that's that's the term they use in italy coming from agritourismo however um there's a lot of different words that are similar farm tourism um agritourism can be spelled many different ways there's um some people use the term aggretainment to mean something different um slightly different or sometimes they use it interchangeably i'm gonna throw in this you know this complicated question of definitions and standards for agritourism also let's you know let's put in the different words that people use one of the questions i saw was how do you see culinary tourism intersecting with agritourism so there's there's a lot of related terms that need to be defined and sorted out in different ways this was quite a few years ago dr carlo barbieri from north carolina did some research on where they actually surveyed people um using different terms farm tourism agritourism i think entertainment i think a variety of different terms and found that the visitors were more likely to say farm tourism or farm visits while the people working in the agritourism field those of us on this webinar debating the definitions and standards we were more likely to understand the term agritourism now that research happened quite a few years ago and i think agritourism has become more widely used as sharon pointed out however it's a i think we have to throw that on throw that in there the um the point that a lot of these terms are overlapping and inconsistently used wow and that hour flew by really quickly um we're just about at the top of the hour so i want to open it up if any panelists have any um quick closing remarks now's an opportunity to say it and then i'll say a few closing words anyone want to jump in with anything i think uh in india um our honorable mahatma gandhi always used to say that india lives in villages so if you want to see real authentic india and the culture and traditions you have to visit the villages in italy so yeah with this opportunity from lisa and the farmers everybody i invite all of you to visit india and its villages and agri tourism thank you so much thank you so much i'm going to take you up on that offer please come any other final closing remarks before that lisa we have to visit usa for the agritourism workshop and i believe because from india uh today i have the list of only at least 21 farmers want to join you know in person in vermont excellent in closing we want to thank all of you for being here today i'm sorry we didn't get to all of the questions there were so many good questions but we'll send out an email afterwards with resources and contact info for all of us on the panel we definitely want to keep this conversation going i know we just like dealt with the tip of the iceberg here and there's so much more to dig into we want to keep the conversation going on this topic and we also have a variety of other topics and other aspects of agritourism that we'll be addressing through this webinar series on december 7th we'll be talking about women's empowerment with perspectives from peru uganda north macedonia and the us and we have many more sessions in the works all of the recordings resources and registration are posted on our website agritourismworkshop.com on that website you'll also find details about the call for proposals to present at the vermont conference in august 30th to september 1st of 2022 remember the call for proposals to present is only open through november 30th and you don't have to commit to being there in person yet you can say in person virtual or you're not sure so please if you're at all interested in sharing your research your experiences what you're doing with agritourism consider submitting a proposal and in closing i want to thank all of you so much for joining us today i hope to see you all again next month and hopefully in person in vermont this summer thanks so much everyone thank you thank you so much thank you thank you goodbye
2021-11-23 05:18
