Are you one of the thousands of California farmers and ranchers who have an existing agritourism program? Are you a tourism professional seeing increased interest in agritourism in your community? Are you a county planner trying to balance the desire of entrepreneurial farmers to ease agritourism restrictions with their neighbors' worries and concerns?

Let's talk. Please join us for these lunchtime webinars and online conversations, starting soon. We'll be in touch soon with registration info and dates (We're trying for every two weeks). Also, please nominate successful farmers to participate as speakers in this series. (See below for more info.)


The University of California Small Farm Program is teaming up with FarmsReach to provide a series of practical webinars and an online forum for conversations about California agritourism, thanks to funding from the USDA Farmers' Market Promotion Program. The UC Small Farm Program has been working for more than fifteen years with UC Cooperative Extension advisors and others to develop resources and connections for California agritourism operators. Our popular Agritourism Intensive workshop series' have been offered in eleven different counties.

Our website hosts useful fact sheets and research. Our online directory and calendar helps visitors find farms and ranches to visit. And, our monthly California Agritourism newsletter helps share news and resources for the agritourism community. FarmsReach also offers an Agritourism Toolkit  and a popular online forum  for information-sharing among the agricultural community. Together, we hope to nurture the statewide agritourism conversation.

Every two weeks, we'll start with a live webinar sharing lessons about an important theme for successful agritourism programs, which will be immediately archived for convenient access during the series. Between the webinars, we'll continue the conversation online in FarmsReach with the webinar presenters and other experts answering questions and moderating discussion so that anyone involved in California agritourism can easily share ideas and get help.

Wondering how to increase revenue from your farm tours? Questions about U-Pick customer management? Need insurance provider recommendations? Concerned about regulatory changes or comparing corn maze designers? Evaluating the effectiveness of Twitter and Instagram? Interested in sharing your strategies for season extension or parking lot design? You're not alone in your adventures and challenges. Please watch for webinar registration information and join the agritourism conversation on Farmsreach.

We have an excellent team of marketing and hospitality professionals presenting in these webinars, and would like your nominations and suggestions of farmers and ranchers who are doing a creative and successful job in their existing agritourism operation.

We have a small stipend available to pay all farmer speakers to contribute 10-15 minutes in any one of the topics. Thank you for your suggestions! Please click here to nominate a farmer speaker for this webinar series.

More news very soon! Please watch FarmsReach and the California Agritourism Newsletter for updates and webinar registration information. We're looking forward to talking with you.

Some call them "Culinary Tourism." Others call them "Farm to Fork." Whatever they're called, dinners on a farm or ranch are increasingly popular with farm fans, and can be profitable for the farmers who host them. We talked with farmers from Full Belly Farm in Capay Valley, Bloomingcamp Ranch in the San Joaquin Valley, and Mother Lode Harvest in the Sierra Nevada foothills to learn a little about their on-farm dinners. Here are their stories and tips for other farmers considering farm dinners:

• Full Belly Farm in the Capay Valley, western Yolo County, is now in the second year of offering monthly farm dinners to the public from March through October. Second generation farm partners, Jenna and Amon Muller, prepare the meals for their 30 guests each month... ...read more 

• Handouts, presentations and notes from the recent Agritourism Intensive classes held in Modesto, Redding and Quincy - including assessment for agritourism worksheets, business planning introduction, county environmental health & planning info, tourism partners, marketing strategy, liability, safety risk management and emergency preparedness materials
• Marketing Regional Farms and Wineries: A Guide for California Agricultural Marketing Groups - published online in November 2015 by the UC Small Farm Program. This guide is based on interviews with and presentations by 24 leaders of farm and wine trails, agritourism associations and regional agricultural marketing groups, intended to help other similar groups.
• Farm Based Education Network
  A free international member network established to strengthen and support the work of educators, farmers and community leaders providing access and experiences of all kinds on productive working farms
• Farm Stay U.S. - A website operated by the U.S. Farm Stay Association (and Scottie Jones of Leaping Lamb Farm in Alsea, Oregon), for promoting farm and ranch stays in the United States. The site includes resource sections for farm stay operators and for farm stay visitors.
• Hipcamp Landshare - rural accommodations marketing site  
  This new San Francisco-based site is dedicated to helping urban people explore rural areas by promoting camping and other accommodations offered on private land. If you are legally permitted to offer camping, cabins, or any kind of farm stay or guest ranch on your land, these folks may be good marketing partners.
• Integrating Safety into Agritourism  
  This website contains a variety of walkthroughs, based on the type of   operation, to help owners identify health and safety hazards and provides resources that can be used to help fix these hazards. It's a great tool that can be used to help keep children (and everyone) safe when they visit farms and ranches.
• North America Farm Direct Marketing Association (NAFDMA) - a membership based trade association dedicated to providing endless peer-to-peer learning opportunities, connections and resources, for farmers who are passionate about the business of agritourism and farm direct marketing.  
• UC Small Farm Program Agritourism - research reports, factsheets, handouts and presentations from workshops, articles and current projects
• World Wide Workers on Organic Farms (WWOOF US) - linking visitors with organic farmers for educational exchange