Agritourism – but with a new twist
What if you could open your farm up to tourists who you could actually learn from? And what if those tourists were more interested in your cropping techniques than the view?
Turns out, there are many farmers worldwide who want to come and learn about New Zealand farming practices and vice versa.
Farm to Farm Tours have been connecting them for more than 30 years. General manager Kirstie Macmillan said her father – Farm to Farm founder Ross Macmillan – was a registered farm consultant in Rangiora when he started taking groups of farmers abroad, to learn from their international peers.
“It started as a sideline,” she said. The first outbound trip was to the Scottish Borders where he’d worked in the 1970s. “He always wanted to show [it to] New Zealand farmers,” Macmillan said, and Farm to Farm have returned almost every year for the past 30 years, barring a Foot and Mouth outbreak in the UK, and during Covid restrictions.
A lot of New Zealand farmers had European ancestry, which added to their farm tour experiences, she said.
Tourism New Zealand was formed in the early 1990s and its work marketing the country also saw an influx of people asking about visiting farms.
Most of the tours were initially centred around conferences, but soon Farm to Farm was offering customised tours based on interests.
Farm to Farm now offers about eight outbound trips a year.
Most of its customers – from farmers, to industry bodies and university groups – came to them through word of mouth, Macmillan said.
“Having been in business a long time, we have a good network.”
James Dixon is responsible for making sure visitors get the technical content they seek. “Our pastoral agriculture is pretty unique and we’re good at it,” he said of New Zealand farming, “but it can be difficult to replicate in other parts of the world.”
The interests of visiting farmers were varied –for example, South Americans were looking for efficiency in grass growth. “There’s a lot of interest in sustainability,” Macmillan said. “It’s really about expanding the knowledge between farming groups.”
Farm to Farm worked with a variety of farm hosts based on what their tour groups wanted to see or learn about.
Farmers were compensated for the time they shared with visitors, Dixon said.
“They don’t need to have these groups, they’re busy people.”
However, he pointed out that farmers also ended up learning from their visitors as “the exchange of ideas goes both ways.
There’s also that pride of showing people what you’ve been working on for the past 10 years.”
Farm to Farm blends more traditional tourism into their tours, because, as Dixon said: “You can’t have information thrown at you all day.”
But because they visit places closer to farms, Dixon said they often took tourism spending to different destinations. “We take our groups to a few regions that are off the tourist trail,” he said.
It was about making sure visitors from rural communities got to meet with rural Kiwis, Macmillan said.