The overall goal of this project is to improve our understanding of the scale and scope of agritourism in the US

This project will serve multiple purposes. Beginning with populating USDA's national agritourism directory, the project will offer farmers and ranchers a national marketing outlet for agritourism offerings and will allow interested consumers to find tourism options in a centralized location. By populating the directory, AMS will also collect information on the number of agritourism farms and the types of activities they offer. Having this in-house list will then enable AMS to conduct its own nationwide agritourism research, which will provide data well beyond the basic information available in the directory. Coordination with nass will be explored throughout this project. Through a national survey of producers, we will be able to investigate several critical issues including: 1) the types of agritourism experiences and channels for direct sales offered by producers, 2) financial information (profitability, revenues, expenses) for agritourism enterprises, 3) motivations of producers for diversifying into agritourism, 4) benefits and challenges of agritourism, and 5) supports needed for producers. The federal agency will: 1. Monitor progress of the agritourism list frame and survey questionnaire development and provide guidance and feedback to the CO operator. Review preliminary findings and drafts and provide feedback to cooperator within prescribed time frames. 2. Assist in the planning and participate in group discussions with agritourism stakeholders and cooperators and provide guidance and feedback to the cooperator. 3. Assist cooperator in accessing federal agency resources. 4. Support and substantially engage in all aspects of the project, including the selection of case studies and updating the USDA AGR itourism directory. The cooperator will: 1. Identify national and regional patterns contributing to successes and challenges for producers through a large-scale survey conducted online. 2. Explore motivations of producers as well as benefits and challenges of agritourism and barriers to entry and expansion through the survey as well as case studies 3. Create a national directory of farms and ranches engaging in agritourism. This directory will serve as the survey list frame. 4. Assist AMS in creating a public-facing version of the directory (including only those farms who agree to be listed) in the USDA's agritourism directory. 5. Communicate research findings to be translated into technical assistance products and practical applications that can inform the development of supports needed for producers and their communities as well as policymakers. 6. Conduct in-depth case studies of ten farms and ranches engaging in agritourism. 7. Launch a national survey of farmers and ranchers engaged in agritourism. 8. Develop survey questionnaire. 9. Summarize descriptive statistics of survey results and conduct statisticaltests to assess how responses differed according to FA RM/ranch type, agritourism activities, location, and farmer/rancher demographics. 10. Provide the following deliverables: a. Internal national directory of farms and ranches practicing agritourism. This list will be held by AMS and serve to provide estim ates of the number and types of farms and ranches engaging in agritourism. This list will also be used for data collection efforts (including the national survey conducted as part of this project B. Public-facing agritourism local food directory. This directory is a subset of the above list but will include only those farms and ranches that OPT into being listed on the public directory. We will create a plan for maintenance and future updates of the internal and public-facing agritourism directories. C. Research reports and summaries. We will produce a detailed report of all case study and survey findings. D. Stakeholder-facing products. We will work with producer associations and agricultural service providers to develop tools and resources to promote best practices on agritourism operations. E. Update the agritourism reading room and the compilation of state agritourism laws on the national agricultural law center's website. F. Conference presentations and journal publications. Share the findings of the research at conferences and publish in peer-review journals to disseminate the results, contribute to the literature on agritourism, and encourage future research. 11. Consult with the federal agency for the purpose of gaining approval if interested in using any data resulting from this agreement for the purposes including, but not limited to, PH.D. Dissertations, other peer-review publications or presentations, and other reports.