by Fred Thys
August 29, 202229 August 2022
Kennett will share her experience with agricultural tourism as an opening speaker who will welcome participants from around the world to Vermont at the current International Agricultural Tourism Workshop. The convention begins Tuesday at the Hilton Lake Champlain Hotel in Burlington and will come with arrangements toured by various estates.
She is very happy that farmers hosting guests have a foreign movement over the past four decades. “I think it’s just phenomenal to see how this total agritourism movement has grown exponentially,” Kennett said. “Here we are part of this global phenomenon. ” This is a great honor for Vermont, a global stage.
Agricultural tourism has an economic driving force in Vermont. This practice contributed $51. 7 million to the state’s economy in 2017, according to Census of Agriculture data compiled by the U. S. Department of Agriculture. U. S. every five years. At the time, there were 1,833 farms in Vermont. directly promoting consumers and 186 farms that provide agricultural tourism and recreational services. In the same year, the Vermont Department of Tourism’s 2017 landmark study found that 35% of visitors surveyed visited farms or farmers’ markets.
This week’s convention was hosted by Lisa Chase, director of the Vermont Tourism Research Center at the University of Vermont. She attended the first workshop in 2018 in Bolzano, Italy, with the goal of bringing the convention to Vermont.
“Italy has evolved agritourism as a way to support rural communities and families working on the land and taking care of farm buildings,” Chase said.
“This is a super exciting opportunity to introduce Vermont’s farms and food to a global audience,” he said. “A lot of other people coming to Vermont had never heard of Vermont. “
And yet, Chase said, Vermont’s farms and food— its cheese, maple syrup and cider — are top notch.
There are another 350 people from 35 countries attending this year, Chase said, and another hundred or two hundred are expected to register remotely. In total, he said, other people from more than 50 countries will participate in user or online.
“It’s great that Vermont is hosting this foreign organization of other people from all over who are excited to share their farms, share their families, share their stories,” Kennett said.
Froni Medeima, owner of the Hotel Guancascos in Gracias, a rural town in the province of Lempira, Honduras, among those who provide themselves personally.
She said that when the State Department began issuing advisories warning Americans not to travel to Honduras because of the country’s higher crime rate, Gracias citizens who relied on tourism had to adapt.
“We started very temporarily looking for new tactics to keep our businesses open,” Medeima said.
They addressed local tourists. Medeima plans to give a lecture at the convention with José Luis Flores, rural progression coordinator of MAPANCE, a regional conservation organization, on fairs with local manufacturers of coffee, honey and panela, or artisanal block sugar, to attract tourists.
“People from the big cities who come to visit like it,” Medeima said.
Flores and Medeima’s presentation at Wednesday’s convention is titled “The Surprising Resilience of Domestic Tourism in Honduras. “They will explain how the shift to domestic tourism in rural areas stored the country’s tourism industry during the pandemic, when few foreign tourists were traveling to Honduras.
Flores said he needs to teach tourists about small-scale coffee farms and the communities that inhabit them, as this can provide a stronger source of income than coffee itself, which is subject to the ups and downs of foreign markets.
“In my opinion, agritourism is broader than visitors,” said Dan Baker, an associate professor of network progression and implemented economics at the University of Vermont. “This includes where their products come from. “
Baker, along with Flores and Medeima, will participate in a panel discussion entitled “Managing Tourism in a Context of Insecurity,” once again with a theme on attracting tourists to rural areas.
Mari Omland, owner of Green Mountain Girls Farm in Northfield, will turn the spotlight back to the host state and deal with the convention on diversity and inclusion in agricultural tourism.
“Reimagine and look at what the provisions of agrotourism are,” he said. “How can we frame things in such a way that they are welcoming to everyone?”
On his farm, he focuses on turning clients’ preconceptions about what a farm entails.
“People come to us to need a petting zoo and they think they’re coming here for their kids, and I think we’ll all get advantages if we start treating it a little bit more like watching farm animals in the grass, it’s a lot more like going to a national park,” Omland said. “Look at animals being what they can be. “
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