Guest Post from Agritourism Australia

Pauline Porcaro of Agritourism Australia has written this wonderful guest post for Farm Stay USA. Thanks Pauline!

Agritourism in Australia

Michelle has asked me to provide an overview of agritourism in Australia, our website (www.agritourismaustralia.com.au), and how we got into agritourism in the first place; so here we go!

My interest in agritourism started teaching my tourism students about business planning and looking for new business ideas they could work on. Agritourism appeared a number of times in the forward government tourism planning documents and I had already noted a lot of agritourism in Italy where we have a holiday home. The two factors together started me reading up on agritourism on the net and I became fascinated with what seemed to be a wonderful ‘down-to-earth’ or ‘escape-the-rat-race’ form of tourism. I felt people were starting to move away from traditional forms of tourism and looking for more natural products; agritourism seemed to provide this.

There was some funding available through the International Specialised Skills Institute here in Australia to study some skills and knowledge which were not adequately developed in this country, so I applied and won the ‘Veneto’ fellowship to travel to Italy and study their well-developed agritourism system and see what we could learn from that. The journey certainly opened my eyes to what I believe is a very sustainable form of tourism, from an economic, social, and environmental point of view; a sector of tourism that has developed well due to good Government intervention, planning and funding. I transformed from being interested to being passionate about agritourism.

Some of the features of the Italian system that make it so successful are;

· They have had Government funding for farmers (up to 70% of set up costs) since 1985

· Farmers must do compulsory training before commencing, at least 100 hours, and government provide funding through training organizations to support this

· Each agritourism has a limit to how large it can grow, ensuring that the business is shared around in each region

· Farmers must continue to earn more than 50% of their revenue from farming; this protects the strong agricultural base in Italy and ensures farmers continue working their farms as well as the tourism business

· Farmers who access government funding to modify their farms for the new business must remain in business for at least 10 years; the government is obviously protecting its financial interests

· Farmers accessing funds must not be over 50 years old

· There is signage in every country town identifying all local agritourism establishments

These features have contributed to the growth of the successful agritourism industry in Italy; a country where the idea of agritourism is so ingrained in the culture that people talk about having an ‘agritourism holiday’.

On return to Australia I was obliged to disseminate my findings from the study trip and wrote a 130 page report that has been distributed to a range of interested bodies. In addition to this I felt morally obliged to do something about trying to grow the industry here. Since returning we have started our on-line agritourism directory so people can find all relevant agritourism information in one place. The website, www.agritourismaustralia.com.au is growing slowly but surely, with the state of Victoria and Western Australia already with a great deal of listings; Queensland will be next to be up and running.

Since starting late last year we have already had a couple of thousand hits from 46 different countries around the world. It has been very exciting. We believe this interest has come from using the international terminology ‘agritourism’; previously in Australia only the term farm stay was used in marketing farm accommodation. There are two problems with this, the term used in many other countries is agritourism not farm stay, secondly, agritourism is an inclusive term as it includes produce sold from the farm gate, events on farms, wineries, tours of farms etc., so it is a much broader term. Some of the farmers that have taken out featured listings with us are reporting a lot of international visits that they weren’t getting in the past; the new term is obviously working.

Australia has an abundance of wonderful tourism products on farms; the problem till now has been finding it, we hope that we are able to remedy this and we welcome you to have a look around the site at some of the great products on offer and perhaps consider a trip to Oz to experience our very “Aussie” farm hospitality and a delicious range of fresh produce.

Pauline Porcaro

Oregon Farm Stay: Leaping Lamb Farm, and Tuscany Agriturismo

A nice article called "Living the country life," from the Corvallis, OR paper the Gazette Times and reporter Kyle Odegard, features the Leaping Lamb Farm Stay in Alsea.

Photo caption: Sherri Woolworth and her daughter, Jordan, watch the sheep eat after giving them some hay at Leaping Lamb Farm on Thursday morning. The Woolworths are from Tacoma and are staying at the farm stay to get away from a busy city life and give their children an opportunity to see first hand about the animals they are learning about in school. (Casey Campbell | Gazette-Times)

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A blog called Experience Tuscany had a bit on agriturismo in Tuscany today. In Italy, agritourism doesn't have the broad definition that it does here. It simply refers to farm stays. And according to this post, Tuscany has 3500 of them! Holy moly! Agritourism in Italy is sure well developed, in part thanks to subsidies from the Italian government and the European Union. These governments see agritourism as desirable for a few reasons: maintaining rural traditions and livelihoods, keeping agricultural landscapes productive and viable, and dispersing tourism away from congested cities, to name a few. The agritourism grants particularly provide capital for farmers who want to invest in new infrastructure or restore old buildings into guesthouses. Though the grants have been subject to some abuses (i.e. people who use the money to restore a building, but never really open their doors to guests), the government seems to have gotten better at regulating this. In many cases, the rules are quite strict. State governments, for example, determine the percentage of food the must come straight from the farm, as well as the percentage of food that must come from the immediate area. These numbers vary from state to state, but the amount of local food that agriturismi must serve usually approaches 100 percent.

By the way, Italy is where I first fell in love with farm stays. I was studying in Rome for a semester, and decided to do a project on the country's agriturismi. Staying on Italian farms is a wonderful experience. They often serve dinner and breakfast both, around a long table that holds all of the farm guests. The food is the very best you'll have anywhere, and because the food comes straight from the farm and the surrounding area, your hosts often tell you about the nuances of the regional cuisine, along with its history. It's a lot of fun to interact with the other guests and the friendly farm owners too. It's a dolce vita.

My favorite agriturismo (out of three I visited with my family) was called Giandriale. Giandriale is high up in the Ligurian mountains, with cool, sweet air and old stone buildings. The farm produces organic (in Italy they call it biological) vegetables, herbs, and honey on its sloping fields, and there is plenty of hiking and biking in the mountains and forests around the farm. Regional specialties include delicious cakes prepared with corn or chestnut flour, and chestnut gnocchi.