A Dare You Can Take… to the Bank:
Alternative Farm Enterprises and Agritourism

Wylie Harris and wife Ozlem Altiok at Future Farms 2004

“What did you just say? People will pay you for that?”

Those are questions that Jim Maetzold is used to hearing from farmers when he talks to them about alternative farm enterprises – particularly things like cow-chip bingo, a “rent-a-cow” operation, or a bed-and-breakfast whose hottest-booking room is a sod house with a dirt floor. But his reply is always the same: an emphatic “You bet!”

Maetzold expanded on that answer in a roomful of producers from Oklahoma and neighboring states at the Future Farms 2004: Digging Deeper workshop in Oklahoma City on November 6th. The title of his program was “Dare! to Try New Ideas on Your Farm or Ranch.”

When it comes to alternative farm enterprises, Maetzold is a hard resource to beat. Raised on a farm in North Dakota, he worked as a county Extension agent, and took a graduate degree in agricultural economics, before embarking on a career with USDA.

Since 1998, he has headed the agency’s National Alternative Enterprises and Agritourism progam, spreading the word about farming options with higher per-acre returns than traditional commodity crops.

For alternative farm enterprises and agritourism, those options are literally limitless. Maetzold distributed a stack of literature, including a thick table of contents to a 2,300 page CD-Rom resource full of ideas, examples, and advice for farmers interested in trying something new.

The first step in such a trial is an inventory of all farm resources, to identify which new enterprises will be the best fit for the land and the family on it.

During the session, participants walked through their own inventories, literally from the ground up, cataloging their farms’ soil, water, air, plant, animal, and “people” – family and community – resources.

During this process, as Maetzold puts it, “things start to complement each other.” By the end, plans had emerged that were tailor-made for harnessing each farm’s unique resources in alternative enterprises.

As important as the farm’s resources are the channels it will use to convert them into income – its marketing plan. This plan answers questions about the “Four P’s” of product, price, place, and promotion. Does the product match an existing demand? Is its price low enough to attract customers, but high enough to yield a profit? Is the business easily accessible to customers? How will the target audience be reached?

Once the plan is hatched, the key to putting it successfully into practice is to start with one activity – and do it well. “When you cut out the middleman and capture his share of the value,” says Maetzold, “you also assume his share of the risk.”

So starting big and expensive is not only unnecessary, it’s also potentially unwise. Alternative enterprises can grow with the farmer’s understanding and skill, and new ones can be added as earlier ones are perfected.

By fostering more direct involvement between farmers and consumers, many alternative farm enterprises incidentally draw more people onto farms. Some make that draw their primary focus, making the transition to agritourism.
Agritourism, put simply, is “inviting the public onto your farm or ranch,” or “selling the agricultural experience.”
“People want to live on the farm for a day,” Maetzold says, and participants who are already running agritourism enterprises agreed.

“They like the quiet,” said one. Another quoted a night-time visitor’s starry-eyed comment, “I didn’t realize it was so dark out here.”

Fulfilling those desires through agritourism is a great way of adding value to farm products. It can start as simply as farm tours for school classes, and grow as large as a full-time bed-and-breakfast operation and as diverse as stargazing, birdwatching, hiking, and picknicking opportunities.

As Maetzold pointed out, it has the added advantage that “they can’t take it offshore.” Agritourism also reduces dependence on commodity markets, and can provide off-season revenue.

For all these reasons, agritourism, along with other alternative farm enterprises, can help to increase the economic viability of farms and rural communities.

Fundamentally, though, these undertakings are also about education. By reconnecting people with the sources of their food, alternative farm enterprises can turn consumers into customers who understand more of the consequences of what and how they eat.

This direct contact shifts both farmers and customers away from “transactional marketing,” with its large volumes and narrow margins, and toward relationship marketing, where profits flow instead from personal interactions and loyalty – alleviating, incidentally, many of the worst effects of the large-scale production and long-range distribution of food.
When farmers and their customers try these new ideas, they are also helping Oklahoma try another new idea: community food security. In the long run, that’s an alternative well worth considering.

Wylie Harris is a “Food and Society” Policy Fellow of the Kellogg Foundation and a frequent contributor to Field Notes.

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