Get the Scoop: Agritourism for Value-Added Dairy Farmers in Pennsylvania

- It is now noon.

So welcome to the third webinar of the Fall 2022 Value-Added Dairy Foods webinar series.

Our topic today is Agritourism for Value-Added Dairy Farmers in Pennsylvania.

This presentation is being recorded and we will share it with those who registered, as well as publish it on our extension website.

This is just our non-discrimination policy statement that we're required to show.

Hosting the Value-Added Dairy Foods Spring webinar series is the Penn State Extension Value-Added Dairy Foods Program Team.

And the team members are myself, Sarah Cornelisse.

I work in the areas of business development and marketing.

Dr. Ginger Fenton, a Dairy Educator in Mercer County, and she has expertise in on-farm and milk quality.

And also Dr. Kerry Kaylegian, Dairy Foods Processing and Food Safety Expert and Associate Research Professor in the Department of Food Science.

Also on the screen you can see the URL's for the Dairy Food Processing Extension website, as well as our Facebook page.

So we encourage you to join us and follow along with our content at both of those websites.

Next month our webinar will take place on December 13th at 12:00 PM.

And Donna Berry who publishes the Daily Dose of Dairy, you can see the image of her newsletter there on your screen, will be joining us to review recent innovations and trends in the dairy industry.

We are working on the registration site for that webinar at this time, but you will be able to find it on the extension website when it is up, and as well as on our Facebook page when we have that ready to publish.

Again, as a reminder, this webinar is being recorded and you will receive a link to the recording by email.

Captioning is available if needed by clicking on the icon at the bottom of your screen.

We ask that you please enter questions throughout the presentation into either the chat box or the question and answer pod.

To ensure adequate time for all of our speakers, we will hold the questions until the end though.

And finally, an evaluation survey will open in your browser upon exiting the webinar.

So in addition to evaluating today's webinar, you'll have the opportunity to share with us topics that you would like to see addressed in future programming.

So we ask that you just take a few moments and complete the short survey to help us better serve you.

So now we'll get into again the topic for today's webinar and that's agritourism for value-added dairy farmers in Pennsylvania and many dairy food processors are interested in diversifying their business beyond processing to include agritourism as well.

And so today during today's webinar, we will discuss how to get started with agritourism to discuss some of the options and provide resources on managing associated risks.

And today's speakers are Dr. Claudia Schmidt, an Assistant Professor of Marketing and Local Regional Food Systems, myself and Dr. Ginger Fenton.

And with that, I will turn it over to Claudia.

- All right, thank you Sarah.

So, I will start with the definition of agritourism because we need to know what we're talking about and there are a lot of different definitions out there and I like to be as inclusive as possible.

And here's a really nice definition by my colleague Lisa Chase from Vermont.

It's a bit complicated and confusing.

So just look at the third ring.

So we have five broad categories.

So, it's education, direct sales, entertainment, outdoor recreation and hospitality.

And there's also the distinction between core activities.

So everything that's happening on the farm and the peripheral activities that's off the farm.

So I also put in a list of all the kinds of potential activities that are out there and there are many more.

So the possibilities are essentially endless, but you are bound by what type of activities are allowed by your municipality.

So, in general, I like to say you are an agritourism operator if you welcome visitors onto your farm, but this is more the research way of looking at things.

So we also have an official definition of agritourism in Pennsylvania.

Now next.

So there've been some really important changes in PA last year.

So one of the most important aspects of the new agritourism civil liability law that came into effect on August 29th, 2021 is, we now have a legal definition of agritourism in PA.

Didn't have that before.

So it's a farm related tourism or farm related entertainment activity that takes place on an agricultural land.

And really important, I also wanna point this one out, it's whether or not for a fee.

And that's really important because operators would be protected even though they do not charge for their agritourism activity.

So part of this law is also to protect agritourism operators.

So you are required to post appropriate signage around your property.

Warning visitors, you know there are dangers here, there are roots you can fall over or holes you can fall into and your visitors also have to sign a waiver.

It's important to do your best to prepare for the unexpected when you're welcoming visitors to your farm.

So you are legally responsible for your actions or inactions.

You know, stuff you don't do that could impact your visitors.

So, it's important to take the time to learn about what all of this means and about the many types of liability you are assuming when you welcome guests to your farm.

Next.

And I just wanna provide a little overview.

So we're actually pretty late in PA with this and there's not a level playing field for agritourism operators across the United States.

So you have to keep in mind, so there are differences when you talk to operators in other states, or when you look at other extension services material because the framework they're operating in is a little bit different.

So this slide shows when these laws were implemented in other states, Kansas and Kentucky were the first ones, and then Iowa, Vermont and PA just recently enacted these laws.

So it's important to note that PA's act is also different from other state's agritourism liability statues.

Unlike other states, PA specifically excludes liability protections for injuries that occur during weddings or concerts.

And also the act will not apply to injuries sustained during overnight stays or as a result of food and beverage services.

So food safety.

Next.

So despite all this, if you're thinking about starting an agritourism business, you are in good company because consumer demand has increased tremendously.

And also during the pandemic, which is not depicted on this slide, but there's been a tremendous increase in spending in the United States.

We use different data sources and compared agritourism revenue increase with other out of home leisure activities.

So you know, spectator sports, entertainments, art.

And just quickly, so the take home message is that agritourism has experienced a really a sharp increase in popularity in comparison to sports and entertainment.

Next.

And if you are in PA, I just wanted to show you the numbers from the census.

So the agriculture census itself has another definition, of agritourism, and they include farm or winery tours, hay rides, hunting and fishing.

So if you are filling out the agriculture census, these are the types of questions you will see.

So the highest number of operators can be found in the southeast.

And this is not surprising because this is also where we have most agriculture in PA and then we have more around population centers like Pittsburgh and then up in the northeast is more hunting.

Next.

So why would you want to start agritourism?

And I've looked at the census data again.

So according to official census data, only 6% of agritourism operators are dairy farmers in PA.

So I'm fortunate to have participated in two surveys on one national survey of agritourism operators and then we conducted one in PA and I'm really grateful to all the operators that filled out these very lengthy surveys.

So now we really have the data input so you can see what other producers and operators are saying, how good or not good it has been for their business.

So this quote is actually from the national survey.

One of the main reasons to start diversifying and offering activities on the farm is to increase profit cash flow.

Next.

So in a PA survey that was in 2019, so before the pandemic, we asked farmers what are, that are already doing agritourism, what were the most important reasons to get started?

So, extremely important is red and very important is yellow.

Also for the following slide.

We can see that an increase in farm net income is the most important reason and that's not surprising.

But other important reasons are also educating the public about agriculture and building goodwill in the community.

They also ranked very high, and this is something I hear very often.

There are a lot of producers that don't charge for events per se, but they use events to, or workshops to have customers buy their products or to draw them to their direct sales operation.

So, increase traffic to increase direct sales is also a very important reason.

And just a note on provide family employment ranked very low.

So for many it wasn't that important.

Next.

And we also asked if our respondents if they succeeded in reaching their goals.

And over 69% of the respondents said that the overall profitability of their farm has improved because of agritourism and even higher ranks the positive impact on society by educating visitors about agriculture.

But note again that only 6% of the respondents strongly agree that the family's quality of life has improved.

So agritourism can be very time intense and it adds to the usual operation, which puts pressure on family members as well.

Next.

And that's actually Sarah now.

- [Sarah] Okay, thank you.

So let's take a look at a few real life examples of some of the agritourism experiences that I've seen value-added dairy businesses offer.

And so starting with the image on the left, we have a number of cheese makers that offer cheese making classes.

So they're sharing their expertise.

And these classes vary from anywhere from the beginner level where they're just doing quick to make cheeses, all the way up to advanced cheese making classes for more difficult, complex or time intensive cheeses that require a greater time investment, by both the participant and the cheese maker.

And often these, you know, more advanced cheese making classes occur over multiple days, spread out, to account for the aging process.

And then during COVID we saw some processors that offered classes take those classes online and offer virtual experiences and maybe send out kits to those that signed up or just sent lists of ingredients, supplies that would be needed.

And so, while classes have trended mostly back to in-person experiences, there may still be an opportunity with virtual offerings.

And then finally in the center here is a menu from a curated tasting offered by a creamery.

And so if you remember from the slide that showed the categories of agritourism at the beginning of the presentation, direct sales is one of those categories.

And two examples I've seen of creative direct sales by cheese makers include this cheese vending machine, located outside of a creamery in western New York.

And that creamery is in a touristy area not far from Letchworth State Park, if you're familiar with that area of the state.

And then also Birchrun Hills Farm down southeastern PA, they started hosting pop-up shop and happy hour events and which I thought was a really fun and unique way to bring people out to their location to buy and but also to enjoy their cheeses and products from the partnering businesses.

Offering tours of your dairy processing facilities are another agritourism possibility.

And just as with farm tours, people are really interested in seeing where and how their food is made and you can always end a guided tour with a product tasting to help drive sales.

And we've seen agritourism trails become popular, and Pennsylvania has both a cheese and ice cream trail.

So if you're in Pennsylvania, you can participate in one of those if you desire.

A less resource intensive than a guided tour is a self-guided tour.

And this, however this option does require planning when either building or remodeling your facilities, since you'll need to think about where to place viewing windows, like you see here on the screen.

You'll want to make sure to place additional photos and educational information in those areas, where the visitors will be to help answer questions that they have.

Because they'll have those questions just as they would if you were offering an in-person guided tour.

So you want to provide that information.

And the last pictures I have here just show what I thought was a really cool addition to a self-guided tour, and that's an opportunity to look into this creamery's aging room.

And typically you only get that through an in-person tour.

But this self-guided tour, they accounted for that when they built their facility and you can see the windows into the aging room and the framed information above in those pictures.

There is a switch that I've circled here in red in the center photo that visitors can actually use to turn on the lights in the aging room.

So when nobody's looking it's dark, and if you, the visitor wants to look in, they can turn the lights on and you can see that view into the aging room there.

So if you're interested in adding agritourism to your value-added dairy business, you may be tempted to dive right in.

However, that can quickly lead to being overwhelmed by all of these additional responsibilities that come along with agritourism, whether it's proper labor or human resource management, effective marketing or visitor engagement.

And if you're already processing you know this self well, that processing is very time intensive and requires you to manage numerous tasks.

So you want to know and plan for what you'll be getting into if you add agritourism to that mix.

And so first off, you really need to know yourself.

What are your skill strengths and weaknesses?

Do you enjoy teaching?

Do you enjoy talking with people?

Do you enjoy demonstrating what you do?

And think about the those things as you consider the different agritourism possibilities.

You also need to know what drives visitors.

What are people looking for when they're participating in different types of agritourism?

You know, for example with classes, are the participants looking for perhaps a fun evening out with their friends while they also learn something new?

So something a little light and not very heavy in terms of information.

Perhaps they're looking to relive an experience that they may have had growing up.

Or are they really interested in taking a deep dive into a topic that they're gonna have to study and learn about?

You want to consider the future.

And this is a point that really stuck out to me when I spoke with some processors that are doing agritourism.

And so whenever possible think about the future and what agritourism experiences you may want to offer down the road, and think about those when you're building your facilities or making upgrades or changes to your existing buildings.

So what types of spaces will you need?

Whether or not you build them now, have them planned for.

And then finally of course take the time to develop a plan for your agritourism.

You know, write everything down, what your goals are, the activities and experiences you want to offer, the resources needed, timeline for launch and that marketing plan.

So when you add an agritourism experience to your operation, it's vital to understand where and how you can impact that visitor experience.

And this will allow you to improve your planning and management.

And this diagram here illustrates a conceptual model of the tourist experience, influences and outcomes.

And these green arrows on the screen and the circle point to where, areas where you can really influence the visitor's experience.

And you want to start not when the visitor arrives at your location but before that.

So tapping into their motivations and expectations for pursuing and participating in agritourism.

And that requires you to understand who your visitors are, what drives them.

And those are aspects that we'll look at next.

You want to build anticipation with visitors, getting them to look forward to the experience that they'll be having with you.

The gray box in the sensor here covers the parts of the visitor's actual experience.

Travel to your location, their onsite activity and their departure travel.

And the part that you can influence and manage most heavily is the onsite activity.

And this has three aspects that I've indicated with the green arrows there on the left, physical, social and then your products and services.

And physical would include things like you know, your building, the classroom or retail space that the visitors enter.

Social aspects would include how visitors interact and engage with you, your employees and other visitors.

And then the products and services is of course those that they can purchase from you.

You know, your dairy food products, the opportunity to go on a tour of your facility, the option perhaps of having products shipped to their home.

So starting with that first green arrow in the previous slide, where you can influence consumers motivations and expectations.

To do that effectively requires you to understand who will be your visitors.

And part of understanding your visitors is to have a basic understanding of their demographics.

What age range are your current visitors or those that you want to target?

What are their incomes or their family status?

For instance, will you target professionals with young families?

And information sources, you know, for finding this data, include the Bureau of Labor Statistics, census data and for those of you in Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania County Profiles.

But beyond demographics, you need to take the time to understand consumer values.

How do they think and feel about different topics?

Perhaps local food or sustainability.

So think about the interests and lifestyles of those that you want to target with your experiences.

You know, what do they do in their free time?

Perhaps cooking and entertaining is a hobby, or they enjoy traveling and they're looking for an experience that will fill a day or two.

Consider the attitudes that individuals have about agriculture and dairy products.

How will the products and experiences that you offer align with, reinforce or provide an opportunity for learning to those consumers?

And finally, what internal needs or motivations do people have that may be compelling them to visit you and partake in the agritourism opportunities that you want to offer?

And to expand on that last point, people have different goals that they're trying to meet when they buy products or take part in experiences.

And these needs have been categorized into four areas that are shown here on this pyramid.

At the bottom are functional goals, such as obtaining a quality product, getting some variety or you know, product provides a sensory appeal to them.

And in an individual's goals or what they view as elements of value become higher level as you move toward the top of this pyramid.

And so after these functional values is, are emotional, followed by life changing, and then at the top is social impact.

And so your agritourism experiences may tap into the emotional element of nostalgia for instance, or fun and entertainment.

Or perhaps it provides someone with a sense of self-actualization.

So understanding visitor values, along with these demographics will help you develop a general consumer profile that you can use to enhance your marketing.

And certainly if you're going to add agritourism to your value-added dairy business, you want it to be profitable.

So think about the different opportunities that exist for when to charge fees.

Some of these options include having an admission fee if you're hosting an event or a tour fee.

Obviously taking generate income from the sale products either during or after visitors partake of another experience.

For example, ensuring that tours conclude in your retail sales room.

You may charge individual activity fees or perhaps a tasting fee if you want to offer visitors the opportunity to taste the selection of your products.

And that's something that's become more popular with dairy products.

So many dairy processors are offering, already offer product samples.

So think of tastings as kind of taking that to the next level of the sampling experience and one that consumers are already familiar with through you know, wine or beer.

And when setting prices there's just a few considerations to keep in mind.

The first being, what are your goals for adding agritourism?

So are you looking to increase the market share, improve the positioning or the image of your processing business?

Are you looking to achieve a certain revenue or profitability figure, or just to improve customer retention and satisfaction?

And so those are just a few examples.

Now the price that you ultimately set on your agritourism experiences should be determined with your goals in mind to ensure they not only align with but move you toward achieving those goals.

Some additional factors to keep in mind as you consider different pricing methods include the number of mix of products or experiences that you're going to offer and the life cycle of each of those.

That is, think about whether your agritourism product or experience is something that you plan to offer for many years, or is it something that you're only going to do for a limited time?

You want to make sure that the prices for your agritourism products and experiences fit into the brand that you're building for your business.

For example, if you want your business to be viewed as family friendly, then your agritourism experiences should be portray that, that sense as well in the pricing.

And finally, you always wanna keep your target audience in mind when setting prices.

Does your price point fit with what you know about the consumer income and expectations?

And that's where that demographic understanding comes into play.

So a framework that can be really useful when setting prices is the three Cs, where the Cs are costs, customers, and competition.

So make sure that you create a budget for each agritourism product or experience that you're going to offer, to ensure that you've covered all of the associated costs.

We've already talked about the importance of understanding potential customers and what you'll learn will help in setting prices there.

And that leaves then researching the competition.

So you should look at both similar agritourism experiences as well as different ones that may also appeal to your intended audience.

Understanding the customer or visitor values requires that you continually engage with them along their journey.

So talk with current potential visitors about your ideas and goals, even before you launch an agritourism option.

And is that can provide you with valuable information that you can use in your planning.

And then remember to continue those conversations as people become aware of what opportunities you're going to offer as they come to visit.

And even after they've visited so that you can make adjustments if needed.

And so, you also want to continually ask yourself what is the visitor's first impression when they arrive and enter your farm or your facility, and what is their last impression?

So if you recall that diagram of the tourist experience from earlier, your marketing promotions before visitors arrive will set their expectations and you want to ensure that you meet or exceed those expectations when they arrive.

And while they're there, the physical, social and product service aspects of their onsite experience will influence their final impression and the recollections of their experience with your business.

You want people to come and leave saying that things were so much better than they expected.

One processor that does cheese making classes told me that the greatest compliment she can receive is for someone to say that her facility is so much cleaner than they expected.

And compliments like that not only benefit the individual processor but also the whole industry.

And so I'm gonna wrap up just by highlighting some of the challenges that were shared with me by processors as they went into agritourism.

And you know, one of those was marketing, and particularly if you're trying to reach a new audience, you know, you've gotta think about how you're currently marketing and how that will be different than how you will need to market for the agritourism experience for success there.

So for example, if you consider a processor, if you're a processor selling wholesale and wanting to add tours, I mean, not only are you adding an agritourism experience but then you are also going to move into direct marketing that experience, requiring you to think differently about audience, promotions and engage.

Labor management has been a challenge as well with folks that I spoke with.

You know, thinking about adding, you know, whether you and any employees can cover the new responsibilities, whether they're gonna have to hire new employees specifically for agritourism.

And some of the folks address this through creative scheduling.

But also making, when doing that, making sure they consider each person's skills and talents.

Because you don't want, it's not enough to just have a warm body when you need somebody, but it also has to be the right person for the job.

Biosecurity and risk management are additional challenges that Claudia and Ginger will be talking about.

And then finally, the last one I just wanna hit on real quickly is visitor engagement.

Because you always, there always needs to be someone pleasant there to answer the same questions and continually think about and work to ensure visitor satisfaction.

And with that I will hand it over to Claudia again.

- [Claudia] Thanks Sarah.

And I will talk even more about challenges because this is what people are really worried about when they start something new.

It's like what are all the challenges that are, you know, ahead of me?

And we did this survey of 1,800 agritourism operators across the United States and we asked them what are the main challenges you are experiencing?

So most operators felt that time management was their biggest challenge, followed by labor availability, and then concerns about liability issues.

But some of these challenges are faced by all AG producers and many noted that the regulations and taxation they experienced and the lack of available insurance makes agritourism a particular difficult undertaking.

So if you wanna learn more about that national agritourism survey, you can scan the QR code or we will also include it in the resource sheet we will send out later with the recording of the webinar.

Next.

I also dug deeper into the data and I looked at these specific issues for dairy farmers.

And the red is are the very challenging issues and yellow is somewhat challenging.

And here again you can see that time management labor issues and liability are seen as very challenging for the operators across the whole US.

Next please.

So in this, so again going back to Pennsylvania in 2019, we asked farmers that are, so operators that are in agritourism and farmers that are already off- farmers that wanna start agritourism and farmers that are already in agritourism about their biggest challenges in operating and starting an agritourism business.

So, just to make that more clear, in the red bars are for farmers that intend to start agritourism, and the blue bars are for the agritourism operators.

And these are the extremely and very challenging issues here.

So both of the groups said that their biggest concerns are about liability issues, the availability of insurance and other state and local regulations.

So it's really important to dot the I's and cross the T's and I'll talk about that in a little bit too.

But you can also see that operators that wanna start are way more varied about the challenges than the operators.

So that is really a good sign.

So you can really see the red bars are exceeding the blue bars by far, except for zoning and permitting, were over 20% of both respondents.

Also keep in mind the different size of the respondent's groups.

So they still perceive this as extremely and very challenging.

And one of the challenges as well is biosecurity.

You can see almost 30% of people are wondering how can they address these concerns.

And now Ginger will talk about that a little bit more.

- [Ginger] Sure, thank you.

So if you'll be inviting people out to the farm, additional biosecurity measures are certainly something to keep in mind, maybe even additional security in general.

Biosecurity refers to a series of management steps and practices to prevent the introduction of an infectious agent into a herd, to prevent the spread of an infectious agent within the herd and then to keep infectious agents from spreading to other herds or flocks.

It can involve screening or testing, quarantining animals, or isolating new animals before they enter the herd.

Monitoring for early detection of disease, this is an issue that should be important to you as a producer and that you should keep in mind as I said, as people come to your value-added dairy business.

It promotes good food safety practices, the health and the wellbeing of your consumers, as well and their mindset we'll say, because they I think can have more confidence when they see that you've implemented these biosecurity measures.

Profitability for producers.

Our animal health and productivity benefit.

The environment.

It's a healthier environment for your animals and good public health practice.

Because should an outbreak occur, it could be extremely costly for a producer and could even decimate an AG business if there's losses of animals due to the outbreak.

Next slide, please.

Consider if you will control access to certain areas of the farm, such as the milk house.

Will additional fencing, gates, or even security cameras, and I think I have an animation here if you hit the return.

Yep, this is in a milk house that I visited.

They have security cameras in there.

But you may need to control, have additional control and monitor visitors to the farm.

Transparency and accessibility and the backstory with products are increasingly gaining importance to our consumers.

So they like to see the animals, especially the calves, which are always a draw to visitors on the farm.

Consider whether you will allow visitors access to all areas of the farm, or to just certain places, such as viewing the milking parlor.

That's popular and as I mentioned, visiting calves.

Remember also that certain animal populations may be more susceptible to disease risks.

Having and maintaining fencing around high risk areas, such as manure pits, mixers, high animal traffic areas is a must.

And another thing to consider is will you provide disposable boots for the visitors that come to your farm?

And I like to look at this as a good opportunity to educate as well, because you can explain why you're providing the boots.

That it's protecting your animals, but also helping keep their shoes clean as well.

And I think it's a nice opportunity for that interaction.

And then also, will you maintain a visitor log?

I think this is a very good practice.

Even if your farm hosts large groups, still keeping a record of who's there.

You might not need to record the name of every single child say in a classroom that's there, but knowing what school visited, what grade, so that you have some type of log to maintain is a good practice.

There always also seems to be activity on the dairy farm, with trucks in and out and feed trucks and milk trucks.

A designated parking area is a wise decision as well.

Next slide please.

And of course, this is my personal mission.

Any chance I get is to promote hand washing.

Remember, the visitors to your farm are likely to touch things, the animals, surfaces that can harbor bacteria and viruses.

So providing hand washing activity, or hand washing facilities is very beneficial.

This picture is from a Twilight Meeting that we held at a dairy farm.

You can see we provided a hand washing station and it was located near the calves.

If you have interest in this or need more information or would like help developing a biosecurity plan, please feel free to reach out to the Penn State Extension Dairy Team or the Extension Veterinary Team.

There are resources out there and we'd be glad to assist you with it.

And thank you to Sarah and Claudia for letting me talk about that for a minute.

- [Claudia] Thanks, and I'm here with even more challenges.

So, other challenges that are mentioned a lot are animal activists are always a concern that comes up for any operators with livestock.

Something to keep in mind.

Then making sure that all regulations are fulfilled is also a challenge.

Just look at the second comment.

We're expected to be on the same playing field as Dairy Queen as far as equipment and environment and that can become, you know, expensive very quickly.

And then, competition is becoming more and more of an issue because agritourism is becoming more and more popular.

So municipalities and tourism agencies are promoting it.

And as the last quote says, some listings on vacation sites are barely a hobby farm and they call themselves you know, agritourism or a farm stay.

So this is also something to keep in mind.

So you need to get to know your competitors as well.

Next slide please.

Really important, so if you wanna get started, that's one of the really the most important steps.

It's fun to start something new and think about new stuff, but it's also really important to dot the Is and cross the Ts.

This is one of those occasions where I would not recommend to just start something and ask for forgiveness later.

I've seen too many cases where this has gone wrong.

So if you start an activity and your neighbors are getting super upset and it turns out that you know it wasn't allowed all the investment, money, time and creativity will be wasted and then also could cost you a huge amount of stress and frustration.

So avoid this by making sure you're following all the rules and regulations.

So that means figuring out in what zone your farm is, make sure you're following the building codes requirements.

And whenever you add a new activity, make sure your insurance is up to date.

Because some insurance providers have stopped covering specific activities because they became too high risk and those things are constantly changing.

So check every time.

Also check with neighbors if you have to, it would be a good idea.

I've read about a couple of cases where neighbors got upset because all of a sudden traffic increased when a farmer started to offer classes and events.

And then so checking with them is neighborly and might prevent further action down the road.

And you also need to keep informed about new regulations.

For example, registration and inspection of hayride attractions will be enforced in 2023 by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.

So, this regulation has always been there but now they're going to enforce it.

I'm also gonna include a link about this on the resource page we will send out.

Jackie Schweichler, who is part of our agritourism team here at Penn State, is a staff attorney at Penn State Law and she's also the program coordinator for the Pennsylvania Agriculture Mediation Program.

So just in case you would need that, but hopefully you do not.

Next slide.

So, once you've found something you are offering and caught up with all the regulations, why not take it to the next level?

There are many different reasons why you would like to collaborate with other operators or with regional organizations to promote agritourism in your area.

So the most important reason is to increase revenue and to get more visitors on the farm.

For the local tourism bureaus, so your DMOs, it's important to have a more diverse offering for the region and also to create hotel revenue.

So if you'd like to get the support of your local DMO, hotel revenue is always a great point to mention.

You can broaden the audience you reach, you can get additional options for marketing.

And depending with whom you're going to collaborate, it can also increase the reputation of your business.

But you also have to be careful because that can also go the other way around.

And you can raise more resources, or can apply for public funding.

And I'll explore this one more in a bit.

It's also a great way to share advertisement resources and potential agritourism trail establishment cost if you're interested in something like that.

Like a website or a map.

And also to exchange information on what works and what doesn't.

Next slide.

So Sarah has already mentioned this one and it comes to trails.

We now have the Scooped Trail from Visit PA and the Cheese Guild Trail, but you're really not limited to stay within your commodity.

Next slide please.

There are a lot of DMOs that wanna promote agritourism in their area and you can join or you can support establish a county based or regional agritourism initiative.

And here's an example from Centre County in PA, that's a self-guided trail that was established by the Chamber of Business and Industry in Centre County and the Tourism Bureau.

So now the Happy Valley Adventure Bureau and they got together and they just had this idea about promoting agritourism.

And they had a marketing company develop a plan for the initiative.

Included a lot of farmers in the discussion.

And so social media is now also led by a third party.

Check out their Instagram, I think they're doing a pretty good job.

Next slide please.

Here's some pointers on where to get funding for all of this.

Contact your local DMO, so your destination marketing organization.

If they don't have agritourism operators or your farm on their map and they're promoting it.

For example, if they have a beer trail or a wine trail but nothing about the farms in their region, it's a huge missed chance.

So get in touch with them.

Early spring we have the Multi-Business Agritourism Grant for the Northeast.

This has passed now.

Projects funded through this program are supposed to benefit multiple dairy businesses by promoting the access and sale of regional dairy products.

So they're, so this is for Delaware, New Jersey, New York and PA.

So I have to check it again if they offer it next year.

Another collaborative grant example is the USDA Rural Business Development Grant.

And not a lot of people know about this.

So they provide technical assistance and training for small businesses in rural areas.

So the public entity will actually write the funding proposal.

So all of them can apply.

So such towns, municipalities, non-profit organizations, and institutions of higher education.

One example is the Huntington County Business and Industry.

They got this grant and they used it to finance a conference in March, 2020.

And they also gave out grants to producers that wanna start an agritourism business and roll this out again on the research sheet.

Next slide please.

So collaborating with your local organizations will help you market your activities.

I just mentioned DMOs, but there are so many more.

But before I conclude, I also wanted to show you what other agritourism operators in PA find to be the best way to promote their business and fact, DMOs are not among them.

So there's so much more room to grow.

The stars are by the five tools that had the highest percent indicating them to be extremely effective.

So word of mouth is the most effective tool.

And Facebook and social media.

And I mean this became even so much more important during the pandemic and I can't mention it enough.

Please update your website if you offer anything for visitors.

Especially put the address on so many times I have to go and Google the address of a business.

And another interesting one is also feature stories.

So if you can get in one of these, they're also a great way.

If I see something in a newspaper, I just wanna go and check it out.

Next slide please.

And this is my last slide.

I wanna make you aware that we expanded Penn State's Farm Finder map to include agritourism operations as well.

We call it now the Online Farmers Market Farm Attraction and Agritourism Experience Map.

It's quite a mouthful, but it really explains what it is.

So please check it out and make sure that your operation is on it if you have one or if you are going to, or if you're getting into the business of agritourism.

So make sure that we have the right information.

And Brian Moyer's contact information, who's the educator that works on it, is on the site as well.

So thank you very much.

Sarah, back to you.

- [Sarah] All right, thank you Claudia.

So with that, that is the end of our presentation today.

We will happily take any questions that anybody has.

Ginger, I don't know, I can't see the chat pod or the Q and A, so.

- I don't see anything in there.

- Well I just, I do wanna remind everybody next month, December 13th will be our next webinar series.

So I encourage you to follow us on Facebook or look on the extension website for the registration for that event.

And otherwise, I guess I don't see any questions, so I thank you everyone for coming and please fill out the evaluation survey.

Thanks.

- I think you just covered everything, thanks.

[Sarah] Yep.

Enjoy your day.

- [Claudia] Thank you.