Ways to Keep Agritourism Relevant Through the COVID-19 Pandemic
October 21, 2020 
This year’s farm festivals will not look like past years, but with a little agritourism planning, you can still host fall activities and keep your customers safe.
I’ve always viewed ‘agritourism’ as a set of marketing/promotional activities that retailing direct marketers have always used to attract more customers to the farm. Today many define the term as encompassing all direct-to-consumer marketing activities.
That’s probably a ‘chicken or egg came first’ discussion that could fill pages. But during this COVID-19 pandemic, many quickly realized — especially those in the government regulatory community — that agritourism is a complex, diverse, challenging, yet economically significant part of today’s agriculture industry.
Some farm market activities were easy to re-open.
As governors slowly allowed re-opening of their states’ businesses, many simply treated farm markets like other retail groceries. Placing barriers between cashiers and customers; wearing face coverings; maintaining six feet to social distance throughout stores; and pre-packaging fresh produce to minimize handling were quickly adopted as farm markets, and even community farmers’ markets, reopened for the 2020 season.
Pick-Your-Own (PYO)/U-Pick farms have always had to manage distance between picking groups to give each enough ripe fruit or berries to fill their baskets. Adding acceptable social distancing requirements probably didn’t impact operations much. Keep an empty row between groups, not letting them work side by side in the first place, and then assigning the next shift of pickers to the skipped rows easily fulfills the distancing rules.
How to Handle the Rest
Experiential activities like hayrides highlight how complex operating safely during a pandemic can be. Operations used several methods to do so. They reduced the number of passengers per vehicle, set up a sanitation schedule for high-touch surfaces (handrails, seats, picking lugs, etc.), and supplied face coverings for those who didn’t bring any. They also added employees for the extra work, potentially reducing income while adding expenses.
As the 2020 season progressed, operators questioned how to handle fall agritourism activities. Fall festivals, pumpkin picking, hayrides, and corn mazes are significant money makers for many farms. The success/failure of these end-of-season enterprises often determines if they’ll have a profitable or a break-even year.
Governors have had to make a lot of tough decisions to protect our health and safety. They have had to make trade-offs that may directly impact the financial stability of individual businesses or segments of industry in order to protect the public. While some states have specifically allowed related activities associated with agritourism to continue with some modifications, several states created overly restrictive modifications, to the point of not allowing any business.
You, your state associations, and Extension services can have an impact. Many are already educating state officials. They are also assisting agritourism operators in adopting appropriate practices and procedures within the limits of current guidelines and rules allowing continuance of somewhat limited operations.
Resources You Can Use
My colleagues Michelle Infante-Casella, Bill Bamka, Steve Kormar, Meredith Melendez, and I, at the request of Rutgers Cooperative Extension Director Dr. Brian Schilling, compiled a checklist of “Considerations for Agritourism Operations During the COVID-19 Pandemic.” We presented this to our Secretary of Agriculture to share with NJ Governor Phil Murphy. It shows the industry was proactively working to make sure that agritourism in NJ would not contribute to the spread of COVID-19. We also created webinars and e-newsletter posts for the industry.
Meanwhile, a consortium of industry organizations published a resource page with input from members like the North American Farmers’ Direct Marketing Association, which conducted and shared online discussions with members illustrating successful practices they had implemented across the U.S. and Canada.
Crowd size management was one of the biggest discussions in all these forums, usually centered around selling or at least pre-registering guests for timed entry, and several apps/web tools available to implement those practices.
Participants also discussed how to reduce handling PYO products at checkout. For example, if you usually include pumpkins sold by the pound with the pre-sale ticket, profits may weaken if you sell it by the piece. On the other hand, one enterprising apple grower indicated his pre-ticket fee included a peck bag for apple picking with each adult ticket. Whether they intended to pick a peck or not, they were buying one.
Agritourism may or may not have attracted the attention of state governments considering how or if types of businesses could re-open during this pandemic. The complexity of this segment of agriculture requires operators to carefully implement practices, if not specific to agritourism, already approved/allowed by their states for similar businesses (amusement parks, public open-air gatherings, indoor functions, retail groceries, etc.) that make sense for the operation.
Most importantly, be smart and be safe so that agritourism can continue to be an important tool in your marketing toolbox.
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