Homestead for the Holidays: Small Farms Explore Agritourism
By: Mary Finnegan
Tags: Tourism, Small Business, Colbeck, Agriculture, Agritourism

12.18.20

“The walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise… I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements,” — Henry David Thoreau, “Walking”

This holiday season, guests of Wyoming’s The Ranch at Rock Creek might wander into the nearby forest to chop down a spritely Douglas Fir (for a $5 fee), but it’s unlikely to make the top of their to-do list. Here at the homestead, harvesting your own Christmas tree is just one small sampling of the dude ranch’s “off-menu” selections. Why settle for Christmas when you can have Christmas with the Cowboys? Guests are encouraged to participate in frontier traditions such as panning for sapphires, setting small game traps, and roping steers. Those who are looking for a more tranquil experience are invited to go “forest bathing” in the nearby John Long Mountains.

The homestead started as a sapphire mining claim before being converted into a modest cattle ranch. Now, after its latest restoration in 2007, the property looks more like a Thomas Kinkade Christmas village than a working farm with a small army of horses and wranglers. But the property advertises itself as a window back in time: “This ranch was homesteaded in 1893 … when our guests walk back to their accommodations from dinner, they admire the same stars, breathe the same mountain air, and cross the same creek that residents of the ranch have enjoyed for over a century.”

The Ranch at Rock Creek is a luxury example of agritourism: the growing global movement that seeks to blend traditional farm life with 21st-century tourism. The practice is marked by cultivating a strong local identity to attract outside visitors. Thanks to Covid, the thought of a country escape has even more curbside appeal, and the global market is expected to grow at a clip of 7.42% per year, reaching 117 billion USD by 2027. What’s causing the new wave of forest bathers?

The Death of the Small Farmer

The days of the fabled family farm are coming to an end. In the 1970s, Earl Butz, Nixon’s secretary of agriculture, told farmers to “get big or get out.” Known by some as the “patron saint of Fast Food Nation,” Butz was a controversial figure whose pro-agribusiness policies are largely responsible for modern day industrial farming methods. We can blame him for the ungodly amount of additives in our diets and for becoming, as one biologist described it, “walking corn chips.” Still, Butz knew how to silence his critics: “Before we go back to organic agriculture,” he told a group of environmentalists, “somebody is going to have to decide what 50 million people we are going to let starve.”

True to his word, the farm industry has been consolidating for decades — four million farms disappeared in the United States between 1948 and 2015 — but total farm output has more than doubled. Rapid technological progress combined with globalization have pushed market prices down: the real price of corn has dropped from $6.30/bu in 1950 to $1.37/bu in 2017.

None of this bodes well for small-time producers with tight margins. Small farms accounted for just a quarter of food production in 2017, down from nearly half in 1991. “I see this as a wholesale removal — or extermination — of our rural class,” said one dairy farmer.

Even in more niche areas, like Christmas tree farming, economies of scale are starting to encroach. According to one second-generation farmer, the Christmas tree wholesale business “seems like a good way to go broke today.” Larger growers can sell up to 200,000 trees to big-box stores such as Costco and Home Depot, cutting into smaller street vendors’ and garden centers’ sales. And that says nothing of artificial trees, which now account for 81% of the Christmas trees displayed each year. “If it weren’t for fake trees, we’d be selling twice as many real trees,” said one grower. “But we’re selling the same number of trees as we were 15 years ago.”

A Diversified Revenue Stream

These compounding pressures have led many farmers to search for diversified revenue streams to supplement their core business. Fortunately, agritourism is ideally suited to small farms. Few people other than investigative reporters would drop cash to visit a Perdue Farms mega-hog facility. The public’s chief desire is to feel reconnected to nature and heritage in an environment they don’t typically have access to. They want to participate in a genuine “farm experience,” whether that’s educational, interactive, or retail-based.

“Farmers are realizing that food can be produced elsewhere cheaper,” said Duncan Hilchey, an agriculture development specialist at Cornell University. “Adding education is a way to stay in business. As cities gobble up farmland, you’re going to have to produce things that add more value.”

Many Christmas tree farmers, in the same vein as The Ranch at Rock Creek, have worked to turn themselves into a sugar-plum fairyland, offering guests new enchantments at every turn to encourage greater spending. Popular additions include mulch mountains, dog sledding, pony-pulled sleigh rides, hot cocoa tastings, and dramatic readings by the campfire. Anything that can be used for a flattering family photo gets extra bonus points. “They want a connection,” said one Texas-based Christmas tree farmer. “They want to say, ‘I harvested this.’ [They] know trees don’t just magically show up, they actually come from somewhere.”

The World Needs More Forest Bathers

Farmers’ rural woes come at a time when many cramped urbanites are desperate to return to the hills. Globally, urban centers continue their trend towards mass convergence. We are expected to see many more megacities (a population of over 10 million) by 2030, and 87% of the U.S. population will live in urban areas by 2040.

Thanks to increased exposure to pollution and stress, urban populations are more inclined to spend long-time vacations at farms than previous generations. From February 2018 to February 2019, nearly a million guests stayed at rural Airbnb listings and farm hosts earned $81 million in revenues. “People are looking for the beauty of a farm but not the ugly of a farm,” said one host. “They get a sense of healing and of peace.”

Some countries, like Japan, have responded with more formal measures. Forest bathing — the act of taking a mindful stroll through the woods — has become a cornerstone of preventative medicine. Qing Li, a famed immunologist at Tokyo’s Nippon Medical School, forced a group of stressed-out, middle-aged businessmen to take a walk in the wood for three days and recorded their responses. Their immune system NK cells were elevated by 40% the first week and 15% even a month later. Japanese doctors can now prescribe forest bathing, and the country hopes to have over one hundred designated “forest therapy trails” within the next decade.

Agriturismo Italia

In Italy, select farms are marked by a new trademark — an orange sunflower head inscribed around a small green farm — that distinguishes the property as a genuine holiday farm. The number of sunflowers at the bottom (1–5), signals to consumers what level of service they can expect, much like the 5-star hotel system. Thanks to favorable governmental policies and a star-studded natural habitat, Italy has one of the most advanced agriturismo systems in the world.

In the 1980s, the Italian government recognized the perils of small farming and began aggressively subsidizing tourist stays to keep farmers on the farm. The industry is nationally regulated by a standardized system designed by the Ministry of Agriculture. Prices are set by farmers but are subject to inspection to prevent fraud. Over 20,000 qualifying farms are listed in its database today.

None of this infrastructure exists in the United States. Great variability appears in zoning and regulations. In one locality, it might be perfectly legal to have an Xtreme Zombie Paintball Hayride pulled along by a 5-ton military vehicle; in another, you could very well be violating proper land use policy. Farmers would be wise to communicate with their municipalities beforehand, and, at the very minimum, “make sure to get good insurance.”

Personal injury claims, though rare, are a realistic part of agritourism. Invite a bunch of cooped up city folk to your farm and watch how many of them try to climb the tractor. Agritourism is often geared towards children, and over 14,000 are injured each year on farms and ranches (40% of whom are visiting). Even farmers can be oblivious to the dangers. “If you’ve grown up on a farm you’re sort of blind to a lot of these things,” said one industry professional, advising owners to hire an outside insurance agent to inspect the property for hazards. “You’ve got to be ever vigilant.”

Are Farmers the New Stationary Circus?

Not everyone is thrilled at the idea of turning their decades-old family home into an entertainment center soon to be trampled on by the general public. “I am not P.T. Barnum,” objected one farmer, referring to a notorious 19th century showman who supposedly coined the adage, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

Cynics believe that, like ecotourism, preservation comes at the cost of exoticization. Poor farmers are the new stationary circus, forced to put on a show for clueless urbanites who demand a sanitized performance of farm life and a free glass of Pinot to boot.

But most believe that agritourism offers more of a symbiotic relationship than the troubling dynamics of zoos or circus shows. Agritourism, in its most innocent form, is a wonderful way for a digitized and urbanized society to reconnect with the source of its food production and preserve some remainder of the earth’s natural beauty. Farmers, on the flip side, are given a creative method for keeping their livelihoods profitable and are exposed to a wide swath of the general public that they may never have encountered before.

Meanwhile, it remains one of the most pleasurable and guilt-free ways of supporting small businesses. “Christmas with the Cowboys” may already be fully booked, but you can guess who’s first in line on the waiting list.

About Colbeck: Colbeck is a strategic lender that partners with companies during periods of transition, providing creative capital solutions to meet their evolving needs. You can reach the team at inquiries@colbeck.com.