Posts Tagged: agritourism

Agritourism continues its whistle-stop tour of California

This week, the UC small farm program's final agritourism workshop in a series of five convenes in Monterey, winding up a whirlwind educational and promotional tour of California aimed at selling the farm - to visitors.

All over California, farmers are inviting visitors to participate in farm camps, harvest festivals, horseback riding, hiking, hunting, bird-watching, tours and farm stand activities like tasting and picking, according to a Corning Observer story about the Feb. 23 agritourism workshop in Red Bluff.

"Agritourism is a good way for farmers and ranchers to connect with the community and make money doing it. The main objective is to make the business work," the article quoted Penny Leff, UC agritourism coordinator.

The workshop series is offering professional development for people involved in agritourism and building a stronger infrastructure for successful agritourism in the region. Participants are learning that agritourism could be profitable, but it is also challenging.

"Don't quit your day job," agritourism entrepreneur Bob Nash said at the Red Bluff event. His small small pumpkin patch on the Old Oregon Trail has evolved to include wagon rides, a petting zoo, an antique tractor show and tractor pulls, corn maze, haunted house and a variety of activities and demonstrations. "It doesn't happen overnight and it takes a lot of marketing."

Other speakers advised talking to city and county planners, doing research, assessing a competitive advantage, understanding the market, finding an angle, navigating the permit and approval process, collaborating with partners, developing a trusted product and marketing it to customers, wrote reporter Susan Meeker.

The final agritourism workshop will be from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Thursday, March 3, at the Monterey County UC Cooperative Extension office. Find more information here.

Diverse offerings will attract visitors to the farm.

The best agritourism is found on real working farms

The San Diego Union Tribune ran a 1,500-word story on local agritourism last Friday, featuring UC expertise and resources front and center.

UC's agritourism coordinator Penny Leff provided reporter Emily Rizzo with a definition of agritourism, "a commercial enterprise on a working farm or ranch conducted for visitor enjoyment and education that generates supplemental income for owners."

Promoting agritourism in San Diego has been underway for years, but positioning the Southern California city as an agritourism destination, said UC small farm advisor Ramiro Lobo, is a relatively new concept.

In 1993, Taco Bell's founder opened Bell Gardens, a 115-acre educational farm that attracted 100,000 visitors annually to picnic, buy fresh produce and ride a mini-train. The ranch attracted busloads of agritourists but closed in 2003, the article said.

“It was obviously a heavily subsidized operation, but (it) created attention,” Lobo commented. “Entrepreneurial farmers started tapping into this as a real alternative to diversify their income stream.”

San Diego County now has more than 100 self-identified agritourism businesses, Lobo told the reporter.

Leff and Lobo agree that consumers want to visit real agricultural operations and have a keen sense when it comes to discerning hokey operations from working farms.

“You don’t have to create a Disneyland,” Lobo said. “We want working farmers to be able to capitalize on this without having to spend a ton of money to create something artificial. Pseudo-farms, for the most part, never really did a great job. Those have come and gone.”

Among the UC agritourism resources mentioned in the story were:

• The UC California Agricultural Tourism Directory, which highlights farms and ranches to visit and upcoming events, at CalAgTour.org.
• University of California Cooperative Extension in San Diego County

U-pick operations are a form of agritourism.

Placer welcomes mandarin lovers

Having skirted damage from last week's freeze threat, Placer County is now ready to welcome visitors from the valley to buy foothill mandarins, said an article in the Sacramento Bee.

Mandarins are a signature crop in Placer County, where the climate and soil produce particularly flavorful fruit, according to a UC Cooperative Extension mandarin information page. Mandarins are more cold tolerant than all other citrus except kumquats.

The Mountain Mandarin Association's website says the first mandarin orange trees were planted in Placer County in the 1880s. According to the agricultural commissioner's crop report, Placer County citrus fruit was valued at $1,223,545 in 2009.

The association website offers maps to the county's 30 producers, an attraction guide, nutrition information and recipes.

Mandarins make lovely holiday gifts.

Nevada profs write the book on California ag

Two University of Nevada, Reno, professors have teamed up to produce a fact-filled, entertaining, practical guide to California agriculture, according to UNR's Nevada News. Geography professor Paul Starrs and art professor Peter Goin coauthored a Field Guide to California Agriculture, published by the University of California Press.

A paperback version of the 504-page book sells for $24.95 from UC Press; Amazon offers it for $16.47.

The authors say California has “the most dramatic modern agricultural landscape in the world."

“Believe us: we, too, try to share our love for the eccentricity and possibility of California. All those miles, all those conversations (routinely in Spanish, which we both speak with some fluency), have brought agriculture to life,” Starrs wrote in the preface.

Goin said he was particularly struck by the state's crop diversity.

"California has so many specialty crops partly because of the state’s ethnic diversity and global markets," Goin noted. "Think chili peppers, pomegranates, pistachios, prickly pear and pima cotton. It’s a visual and culinary feast.”

Why did Nevada professors write about California agriculture? Both love to travel and have roots in the state. Goin’s father worked as a seasonal farmworker in lemon groves while studying at UC Berkeley. Starrs is a resident of both Nevada and California and has spent time discovering the back roads of California, the story said.

Agritourism gets a plug on San Francisco TV

San Francisco consumers learned of educational and fun opportunities for agritourism from a clip on KGO-TV news yesterday about a trend that  boosts the bottom line for farmers involved in quaint agricultural industries.

The segment focused on an organic dairy in Petaluma, an apple U-pick operation in Sebastopol and a sustainable farm that offers over-night stays also in Sebastopol.

"People come from all over the world, although there are many people who just come from San Francisco or Sacramento; it's a short drive to us, it's an easy weekend," Christine Cole of Full House Farm told the reporter.

Penny Leff, the agritourism coordinator for the UC Small Farm Program, said the trend is good for visitors and the local economy.

"More agritourism businesses increase tourism to the county overall," Leff said. "If there are more things for people to do when they are visiting the community, they are more likely to stay overnight. And they are more likely to eat at restaurants in town. Generally there's a great spill over from agritourism businesses to community development."

The TV story also plugged the ANR publication Planning and Managing Agritourism and Nature Tourism Enterprises: A Handbook, and the Small Farm Program's online database of California agritourism operations, http://calagtour.org.

UC publication for farmers interested in agritourism.

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