Vermont organises second conference on world agri-tourism

Wednesday, August 31, 2022

At Liberty Hill Farm, in Rochester, US, breakfast is crucial to the overnight experience where Beth Kennett has greeted guests for more than 38 years. Kenneth by offering Cabot yogurt, Vermont maple syrup, sausage and rhubarb muffins, she informs her visitors from where their food comes and the honesty that goes behind the preparation of that food.

With agricultural tourism, Kennett will share her experience at the second-ever International Workshop on Agricultural Tourism, as one of the opening speakers who will receive the participants worldwide to Vermont. On Tuesday, the conference starts at the Hilton Lake Champlain Hotel in Burlington. It will include organized tours to many farms.

She is excited that a simple gesture where farmers started hosting guests has now grown into an international movement in the last four decades. She said that it’s just exceptional to know how this whole movement regarding agritourism has grown tremendously. Here they are part of this worldwide phenomenon. For Vermont, it’s such an enormous respect and admiration.

In Vermont, agricultural tourism has become a main financial driver. To the state’s economy in 2017, this practice contributed around $51.7 million, as per agricultural census data which is gathered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture every five years. There were 1,833 Vermont farms at that point, selling to the consumers directly and 186 farms providing agricultural tourism and recreational services. Vermont Department of Tourism’s 2017 benchmark study in the same year discovered that 35% of visitors surveyed visited farms or farmers’ markets.

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