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What is Agritourism and how does it help Pennsylvania farmers?

Apples are displayed for sale at a farmers market in Falls Church, Va., Saturday, March 11, 2017. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Apples are displayed for sale at a farmers market in Falls Church, Va., Saturday, March 11, 2017. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Airdate: Tuesday, September 6, 2022

The end of summer and transition to fall not only brings cooler temperatures and changing leaves, but also means Pennsylvania farms and orchards will soon welcome visitors from all over for apple picking and agritourism season.

Agritourism is a “form of commercial enterprise that links agricultural production and/or processing with tourism in order to attract visitors onto a farm, ranch, or other agricultural business for the purposes of entertaining and/or educating the visitors and generating income for the farm, ranch, or business owner,” according to the USDA.

Hugh McPherson from Maple Farms in York County and Karen Paulus from Mount Airy Orchards in Dillsburg appeared on SmartTalk to discuss the importance of agritourism to family farms in Pennsylvania.

“We’re in our 26th season of agritourism and people were doing it certainly before then with ‘Pick Your Own’ as kind of how everything started with people coming to the farm,” McPherson said. “Really that’s kind of the big category is how are we going to get people directly to the farm? And that’s something Karen and I both believe in completely. We think people should know where their food comes from.”

Many farms will host events such as: flower festivals, corn mazes, wine events and pick-your-own apples, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and pumpkins as a way to get people to visit, McPherson said.

“All of that is focused on getting people in touch with the food and with the flowers, things that we’re growing on the farm,” McPherson said.

Over the years, the industry has shifted, and farmers had to adapt as well.

“When we purchased the orchard about 23 years ago, the majority of our apples went to a packing house to ship out to grocery stores all across the country,” Paulus said. “I would say about 70%, 75% of what we’re doing now is retail and the smaller percent is wholesale. And there’s just a lot of reasons for that. We enjoy that more. It’s allowed us to grow our business. It’s allowed us to bring in our local community people to employ our local community people. It’s allowed the community to come enjoy the orchard where we weren’t doing that before.”

One reason McPherson and Paulus enjoy agritourism is because it connects people to agriculture.

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