A closer look at... agritourism

This month, I’m taking a closer look at… agritourism.

What does picking apples have to do with business and connection?

Everything.

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Andy

I grew up in Lima, Peru. If you haven’t visited, you may be in for a surprise. Unlike popular opinion on what ‘South America’ should look like - tropical, green, Amazonian - Lima is a desert.

Deserts are not conventionally associated with agriculture. Yet, amidst the rocky backdrop, little me managed to forge a connection with the land. My school had a partnership with the Universidad Agraria - an agricultural haven, perhaps the only one - where university students taught us kids about plants and animals despite the landscape’s odds.

My parents tease me to this day, recalling how I would skip across the fields, exploring produce with a curious eye, while my classmates aggressively ran in search of insects to trap (and, unintentionally, kill). This field-skipping, insect-killing chaos was not only allowed but also encouraged. Experiencing nature first-hand, in our own ways, is what allowed us to forge a connection with it.

Note: I was so in love with this place that I decided I wanted to be a ‘veterinarian on weekdays and a singer on weekends’ as an adult. Why I assumed I’d work 7 days a week confounds me - especially given the accuracy.

Fast forward twenty years, and I am still that girl skipping through produce fields. I’m just now at grocery stores in Central London instead of carefully-watered fields of greens in Lima. OK, fine, I don’t skip across grocery stores - but the connection remains…

—

I was recently at a wedding with a tough decision to make. Should I first engage in small talk with the man on my left or my right? Let’s go left.

After the usual pleasantries, I asked him what he did for a living. He told me he was building a group of ‘agritourism’ companies. Now that’s interesting. I did not even bother to introduce myself to the person on my right and proceeded to bombard Mr. Harvard with questions (who should I apologize to first about that?).  

I left that conversation fascinated by the potential of agritourism as a business model enabling connection. I could trace my own love for nature back to my experience of agritourism at the Universidad Agraria as a little girl in Lima. And you’re now telling me this is a viable, profitable business model? Say no more.   

Let’s start with the basics. Agritourism, I learned, (i.e., “agricultural tourism”) broadly refers to activities attracting visitors (customers) to agricultural land. These activities are not only educational or recreational, but also commercial (through increased produce sales). They may take place in parks, universities, and vegetable gardens in the city, but usually involve a trip to a farm in the countryside. As you may expect, there are many ways agritourism could play out, broadly including:

There is certainly potential for overlap between these (i.e. your lifestyle option may have a strong educational component to it) and a lot of nuance - farm stays, petting zoos, hayrides, workshops, and more. The list is simply meant to get your brain going on how agritourism may play out. It’s not just an evening of lumberjack-dressed college students posting Instagram pictures at pumpkin patches during the fall (or kids trapping butterflies in central Lima).

It all sounds very niche, I hear you say. How big, really, is the global agritourism market? Thank you, Brian. Well, estimates vary, as they always do, mainly on the back of i) rural informality, and ii) scope. However, to give you a sense of magnitude, sources converge at an average market size of around $50bn for 2023, growing to $100bn+ by 2030¹ . More than 2.0x in less than 10 years.  

Growth can be attributed to many of the same trends I’ve spoken about in the Casa Cinco newsletter, which makes this all the more exciting. Mainly:

1. Increased spend on experiences, especially if authentic and contributing to local communities

2. Desire for health and wellbeing, from farm-to-table food, to digital detoxes, to rural retreats, and more

3. Focus on sustainability, whether related to the experience in general, the food, the type of tourism, or other

I’d add a pursuit for connection, but more on that later. So - large, growing, and fragmented industry. Great. Now, how does the business model really work?

Take Mary, who owns a traditional Goldilocks orchard (aka ‘apple farm’) - big enough to keep her busy, small enough to dissuade institutional interest. Mary and her partner work diligently on the farm, experimenting with seed varieties and planting techniques, taking care of harvesting, distribution, and sales (currently limited to local farmers’ markets and small shops). Mary employs temporary workers during harvesting season and is considering investing in storage and packaging equipment. Maybe that will take this business to the next level. Mary has too much to do and too little time. She doesn’t even have a little lamb (sorry, I had to).

Now, let’s turn Mary’s farm around 180 degrees and into an agritourism-only business. Bear in mind this is a simplified example for illustrative purposes only. I’m not suggesting you necessarily do this if you happen to own land (or if your name is Mary).

Mary will still work diligently on the farm, experimenting with seed varieties and planting techniques, but it all changes when harvesting comes around. The key difference: instead of Mary going out to the market, the market comes to Mary. Her model will shift from having many apples fight for one customer, to having many customers fight for one apple. It will shift from a product-centric business selling apples, to a hospitality-centric business selling experiences (and apples, of course).

How it works: the moment Mary’s apples are ready for harvest, she opens the gates of her farm for families to come in. Mary can charge for that, as this is her property. Say it’s a $5 entry fee. With careful signage and appropriate safety measures, Mary’s guests can then enjoy a day in the countryside picking apples. Once their baskets are full, they can head to the cashier and pay for the apples they picked up. After a few weeks, not only have all apples been picked up, but Mary’s work is done. No need for storage, no pursuit of shelf space. The season is over. Open the champagne!  

As with any business model, it isn’t all rainbows and butterflies. Setting up an agritourism business has its challenges and considerations. These include, but are not limited to:

• Initial investment: Signposting and guidance, fit outs (i.e. is there room for parking?), tools and equipment, booking system, and more…

• Demand: People won’t just show up at the door and generally won’t drive longer than 65 kilometers (c. 40 miles) for agritourism

• Quality: It’s not as simple as just opening the gates - the customer journey must be carefully curated and the produce must remain great

• Product: Not all produce sells well under this business model (i.e. leafy greens) and not all produce has good margins for it

• Sustainability: Environmental considerations must be carefully studied. It doesn’t make sense if visitors end up doing more harm than good

Note: If you’re interested in learning further, or know someone who can benefit from this business model, check out Cornell’s resources on agritourism.

Despite these, agritourism can provide a viable, profitable business model for farmers. It can provide visitors with plenty of physical and psychological benefits tied to spending time outdoors. It can bring numerous benefits to local communities through job creation, diversified sources of income, population retention, and more.

Most importantly, agritourism can act as a powerful conduit for connection.

By providing an experience, agritourism establishes a connection between customers and the land they visited, the produce they picked up, the farmer they met, and the other people they enjoyed the day with.

So agritourism can not only be a profitable business model, but also an incredibly powerful one from a human perspective - one that connects people to one another and the planet.

These connections establish long-term relationships that outlive the experience. Relationships that need not be literal in order to have transcendence. In other words, if I have a lovely visit to a farm and meet the farmer, I will probably develop an increased awareness of, respect for, and connection to, farmers in general. The same applies to the food I eat and the land I touch. I feel connected to it, as a concept, from then onwards.

Connections like these are what the man sitting beside me at the wedding wants people across the U.S. to have. After learning where a burger’s ingredients come from, they completely change their relationship to food.  

It’s what makes families visit the same farms year after year. I feel like I’m in my friend’s home, seeing how everything is made and surrounded by people I enjoy.

It’s what Uber drivers in Medellin attribute their care for the city to. We all come from farms… we know how to take care of land.

It’s what allows me, nearly two decades after skipping through fields in Lima, to understand what Mr. Harvard’s brilliant business was all about and write about agritourism as a conduit for connection.

Give it a try, and let me know how it goes.

SOURCES

¹  Cornell, Straits, Allied Market Research, Imarc

We’ll talk soon. Thank you for joining me at Casa Cinco.

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