Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
3
On-Farm Marketing and Activities
Introduction
As the name suggests, this is where marketing encourages the culinary
tourist to visit the farm where retailing and leisure activities take place. Often
the produce grown on the farm is sold either partially or completely direct to
the consumer who visits the farm. This minimizes handling costs and elim-
inates the majority of shipping costs (some famers may also want to do a
delivery service for loyal consumers).
In many regions farmers evolved their marketing to work as a group,
and as groups of farmers have developed food trails and food coopera-
tives to the benefit of all the local members. Two of the most famous food
trails are the beer route in the Czech Republic and the Malt Whisky Trail in
Scotland.
We will discuss food trails in more depth later in the topic.
Farm Gate Sales/Roadside Stands
The early on-farm retailers and drivers of food tourism placed their sur-
plus produce at the farm gate on a makeshift roadside stand often made of
pallets with an honesty box and allowed the consumer to select product.
One local farm near where we live still does that; the produce is placed
in a roadside cool room and an honesty box is placed next to the cabinet.
We suspect that the farmer does not think of himself as being in tourism or
retailing, but every week we stop at the farm and buy produce. We have
never met the farmer, but he is helping to build the tourism traffic in the
area through word-of-mouth marketing as the produce is exceedingly fresh
and one of the few sources of organic food in the region.
