Direct Sales Approaches, Visitors, and Profitability of Agritourism Operations in the U.S.

Agritourism operations enhance economic viability and sustain the business by open-ing farms to visitors for education, recreation, entertainment, and direct sales of farm products and services. Previous studies in the US show that on-farm direct sales, in general, show a positive association, whereas off-farm direct sales show a negative as-sociation with the profitability of agritourism operations. Farmers consider U-pick, sales through a farm stand/store, and subscription farming or community supported agriculture (CSA) (on-farm pick up) as on-farm, and CSA (off-farm delivery) and sell-ing at a farmers’ market as off-farm direct sales approaches. However, which specific approach attracts more visitors to a farm and generates higher profitability remains underexplored. Multivariate analysis using the recently collected data from a U.S. na-tional survey of operators reveals that on-farm direct sales such as a U-pick and a farm stand/store attracted significantly more visits to an agritourism operation, which ulti-mately yielded higher profitability. In contrast, the selling of produce at farmers’ mar-kets attracted significantly fewer visits to the farm and reportedly reduced profitabil-ity. This evidence has implications to agritourism operators, policymakers, and Exten-sion educators engaged in starting, expanding, and promoting direct sales at agritour-ism operations for their economic viability and sustainability.