Ohio agritourism season approaches, yet remains obscure to common public | Local Farm

The word “agritourism” has been around for some time — articles on the subject dating back to 2012 in The Crescent-News.

In a February online episode of “Marketing Matters with Christie Welch,” Johnston, was interviewed on her research. To begin the study, her and her team had to first define agritourism.

”There’s many definitions out there, every state kind of has their own idea of what agritourism is,” she explained to Welch. “But here in the state of Ohio in specific to the research that we did on this study we defined agritourism as an ag operation that’s inviting people to the farm to see what it is and what is happening. Whether that’s growing pumpkins or having a vineyard full of grapes, selling Christmas trees — anything along that line. Anytime the farm is inviting customers out to see what is happening in the agricultural world.”

Ohio is known as an agricultural state, however Johnston went on to discuss that its agritourist industry lacks a base.

”There’s lots of people doing agritourism, but we don’t have all of those people on a collective platform,” she revealed.

Johnston proposed a possibility for this is that many farms may not know that what they’re doing is agritourism.

Activities such as pumpkin picking in the fall, berry picking in the spring, the selling of peaches, apples, local grown honey, or maple syrup all fall under the definition of agritourism Johnston has defined.

Out of the 300 agritourism farms Johnston and team managed to track down, 20% of them responded to the surveys sent out, garnering 60 responses in total.

As this is the first time Johnston’s team has attempted to reach out to agritourist farms, they were satisfied with the results, but hope to gain more the next time they perform the study.

The survey consisted of many questions regarding how the farms marketed their business, and Johnston reported they included questions about the COVID pandemic and how it has affected their business as well.

”I think when we talk about what really stood out in the survey were that a lot of agritourism farms really want to be better at marketing their business and I think that’s interesting because marketing has changed substantially over the last several years and I think COVID has even played a part in that,” Johnston concluded. “I know for me, just speaking of me personally, whenever I get ready to go somewhere I’m constantly checking Facebook, checking a website to see if they’re open. I think COVID has changed a lot of people’s hours and it’s restricted what it is they’re able to do.”

As someone with a marketing background, she was very interested in these findings of the desire to market better in 2022. Johnston showed support for this as there are “a lot of wonderful, hidden agritourism farms” but the public remains unaware of where they are.

Looking at the northwest Ohio area, there are many farms and agricultural businesses, but the public seems to be unaware of those not actively marketing (ex: Leisure Time Winery). To remedy this, the Defiance County OSU Extension office has a current page on its website called “Whose Farm is It?” The page showcases local farms, one per each of the 12 townships.

”I think the one thing that we learned from this survey is that there’s always more things to figure and there’s always more things that we want to be able to help with. I think spreading the word about agritourism here in the great state of Ohio and the benefits that it brings not only to these local economies but there’s jobs and there’s different activities to do as a family. I think when we think about things that people can do that are not only educational, but good for your health and witness it’s to visit these farms and to support local farmers for inviting people out to the farm,” Johnston said.

When asked what she thinks about the future of agritourism, Johnston replied, “I think one thing that we would like to see in the future is just being able to implement some of these needs that farmers have and being able to bring in professionals and just figuring out how we can help agritourism moving forward. Studying trends, looking at different things like that to help them make the most for their dollar.”

Johnston and team plan to re-launch their survey possibly at the end of 2022, with more questions. At this moment in time, the study has not yet been published for readers on comdev.osu.edu. Persons interested may contact Johnston for a copy at [email protected] as well as for more information.