Representative Kulik’s bill to create a commission to study how to best promote agritourism in Massachusetts is an important effort to support our farming communities and further protect the agricultural and forested landscapes they steward.
Agricultural tourism is much more than good eats — although it is most certainly that — and creates exciting opportunities for educating the hundreds of thousands of families that directly, through the farm products we consume daily, and indirectly, through the environmental services provided by sustainably managed soils and waterways, depend on resilient, diversified and, to the extent possible, local farming systems.
I have spent the last two decades supporting the development and insertion of agritourism initiatives into what might be called “conventional” tourism destinations and activities in the Central Andes and have witnessed firsthand and in incredibly diverse cultural, ecological and economic settings the power of food and farms to engage both farmers and visitors in moments of transformation as they make connections between what they eat and the impacts of what they eat on themselves, their children, the environment and, increasingly, the planet’s rapidly changing climate.
I encourage Rep. Kulik and those that will carry out the proposed study, if approved, to consider looking beyond our borders for insights into the opportunities for and challenges to cultivating agritourism in our state. In hundreds of destinations and in dozens of countries around the world, food and farms are already key motivators in tourists’ choices to visit them. Through strategic, creative, participatory and inclusive planning, agritourism can contribute to the sustainability of farms and farming communities here and around the world.
Stephen Taranto
Florence