Tourism and Agriculture

New Geographies of Consumption, Production and Rural Restructuring

Rebecca Torres, Janet Momsen

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9781136849220
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

Shifting global consumption patterns, tastes and attitudes towards food, leisure, travel and place have opened new opportunities for rural producers in the form of agritourism, ecotourism, wine, food and rural tourism and specialized niche market agricultural production for tourism. Agriculture is one of the oldest and most basic parts of the global economy, while tourism is one of the newest and most rapidly spreading. In the face of current problems of climate change, rising food prices, poverty and a global financial crisis, linkages between agriculture and tourism may provide the basis for new solutions in many countries. A number of challenges, nevertheless, confront the realization of synergies between tourism and agriculture.

Tourism and Agriculture examines regional specific cases at the interface between tourism and agriculture, looking at the impacts of rural restructuring, and new geographies of consumption and production. To meet the need for a more comprehensive appreciation of the relationships and interactions between the tourism and agricultural economic sectors, this book consider the factors that influence the nature of these relationships; and explore avenues for facilitating synergistic relationships between tourism and agriculture. These relationships are examined in thirteen chapters through case studies from eastern and western Europe, Japan and the United States and from the developing countries of the Pacific, the Caribbean and Ghana and Mexico. Themes of diversification, economic development, and emerging new forms of production and consumption, are integrated throughout the entire book.

This essential volume, built on original research, generates new insights into the relationships between tourism and agriculture and future economic rural development. Edited by leading researchers and academics in the field, this book will be of value to students, researchers and academics interested in tourism, agriculture and rural development.

1 Introduction

Rebecca Maria Torres and Janet Momsen

In this volume, we bring together two sectors of the world economy and consider their interactions and linkages. Agriculture is one of the oldest and most basic sectors of the global economy, whereas tourism is one of the newest and most rapidly spreading. In the face of current problems of climate change, rising food prices and a global financial crisis, linkages between agriculture and tourism may provide the basis for new solutions in many countries. A number of challenges, nevertheless, confront the realization of synergies between tourism and agriculture. One prerequisite is enhanced understanding of the processes of rural restructuring and agricultural transformation and their association with tourism development – including better recognition of their potential role as beneficial, detrimental or disruptive. These relationships are examined in 13 chapters through case studies from eastern and western Europe, Japan and the United States and from the developing countries of the Pacific, the Caribbean and Ghana and Mexico.

Since the postwar era, global economic restructuring has been characterized by a declining agricultural sector and the rise of service-based economies. Although agriculture remains an important livelihood strategy for many rural people across the globe, tourism has become the world's largest and fastest growing industry. Harnessing its massive potential has become a key economic development strategy in both industrialized and developing nations. Until recently, the relationships between global tourism and local agriculture had not been explored in-depth. Recent research suggests that tourism and agriculture relationships tend to be multifaceted, place-specific and highly complex. The potential for creating synergistic relationships between tourism and agriculture has been widely recognized by development planners, policy makers and academics alike. However, realizing the benefit of those synergies has proven far more difficult than anticipated. Furthermore, there is growing evidence that the two sectors often vie for resources and evolve in a manner that is detrimental to local agriculture and rural communities because of competition for labour, land, water, investment and other resources. Demand for labour may lead to out migration from the countryside to tourist resorts, thus leaving underutilized farmland in the countryside and encouraging the growth of urban slums because of the lack of housing for workers (Torres and Momsen 2005; Chapter 4).

This book aims to fill a gap in the current literature by presenting regionally specific cases of the interface between tourism and agriculture, examining the impacts of rural restructuring and analyzing the implications of new geographies of consumption and production. Indeed, the book highlights a variety of emerging original research conducted on this topic that has neither previously been brought together nor conceptualized in this manner. To meet this need for a more comprehensive appreciation of the relationships and interactions between the tourism and agricultural economic sectors, this book will (1) examine the multiple relationships that exist between tourism and agriculture in various contexts, (2) consider the factors that influence the nature of these relationships and (3) explore avenues for facilitating and realizing the benefit of synergistic relationships between tourism and agriculture. Given these objectives, we have brought together 13 contributions from 23 scholars working in geography, history, agriculture, psychology, business, tourism studies and community and regional development. Given the place-specific nature of tourism and agriculture relationships, these contributions offer case studies from a wide range of geographic contexts. Although themes of diversification, economic development and emerging new forms of production and consumption are threaded throughout the entire book, the chapters fall roughly into three parts: (I) tourism, agriculture and rural restructuring; (II) building tourism and agricultural linkages: challenges and potential and (III) new forms of tourism and agricultural production and consumption.

Part I (Chapters 2–5) incorporates chapters examining the intersections between tourism and agriculture – both beneficial and detrimental to communities – and the implications of these interactions for rural restructuring, poverty alleviation, economic development and empowerment of rural communities and people. In their totality, the chapters illustrate the complex intersections between local and global forces in producing existing tourism and agricultural relations, processes of rural restructuring and contingencies that foster or constrain synergies.

Part II (Chapters 6–9) addresses the relationships between tourism and agriculture, with an emphasis on the challenges and potential for creating linkages between the two sectors to foster food production for tourism markets and agricultural development, contribute to regional development, alleviate poverty, decrease leakages through imports, improve tourism industry food supplies, increase tourist access to local foods, improve the gastronomic experience for visitors, foster unique regionalized food identities and reduce food miles. Increasing backward linkages between tourism and agriculture contributes to sustainability in both the tourism and agriculture sectors.

In Part III (Chapters 10–14), the authors explore the various new forms of tourism and agriculture production and consumption that are emerging as farmers diversify farm production and tourists continue to seek out new experiences, destinations and types of consumption in terms of food, place, ethics, leisure and entertainment. These new forms of tourism – including rural, pro-poor, sustainable, responsible, farm, gastronomic, wine and agritourism – have emerged as a growing niche market that provides local rural producers with alternative outlets and sources of income, while enhancing the tourism industry offerings. The demand for these new products is driven, in part, by global shifts in consumer tastes, preferences and ethics that increasingly favour local production and fair trade products, organic or natural foods, sustainable tourism and agriculture and desire to reconnect to farming, food, place and rurality. Indeed, both tourism and agricultural developments stand to gain through the synergies inherent in these new forms of production and consumption (Part III).

Shifting global consumption patterns, tastes and attitudes towards food, leisure, travel and place have opened up new opportunities for producers in the form of rural tourism, agritourism, ecotourism, wine tourism, food tourism and specialized niche market agricultural production for tourist consumption. Tourists allow farmers to reduce food miles by bringing the market to the farm and so cut the costs of distributing products.

For many rural dwellers, both farm and non-farm, the provision of both local produce and new leisure spaces for tourist consumption provides the only way for a viable lifestyle. Both Rilla and Che and Wargenau (Chapters 12 and 13, respectively) suggest that, because of the diversification and increased income associated with rural or agritourism, some family farms are able to maintain land in agriculture as opposed to selling for development or other uses, employing tourism income to enhance and expand farming operations.

Therefore, fomenting the creation of linkages between tourism and agriculture has recently received considerable attention as a strategy for rural and agricultural development in stagnating rural areas. As tourism and agriculture increasingly intersect and transform, there is growing interest among governments, the private sector, academics, donor agencies and non-profit organizations to better understand the relationship between these two sectors, to encourage interaction and to become involved in fostering these linkages. Chapter 3, on rural tourism in Ghana, illustrates the importance of the private sector and return migrants, whereas Chapter 9, on Barbados, provides an example of government and international agencies encouraging tourism's links with local agriculture. Similarly, Chapter 10 discusses the role of government in providing training, regulation and certification for rural and agritourism in Italy.

Creating linkages between tourism and agriculture, through production for tourism markets and/or agritourism, both necessitates and facilitates the opportunity for unique forms of marketing place and consumption. These new forms of marketing capitalize on new global consumption patterns manifest in the demand for high-quality, healthy, authentic, sustainable and responsible tourism and food products. For example, Berno (Chapter 6) discusses the emergence of ‘farm-to-fork’ concepts promoting the use of local agricultural products as part of the tourism experience. In one of the most novel approaches, Cox et al. (Chapter 10) discuss Italy's highly successful ‘adopt-a-sheep’ programme, where ‘parents’ are encouraged to visit their adoptees on the farm. Similarly, in the case of wine tourism, consumers are brought to the production space, which creates opportunities for education, quality assurance and place attachments associated with consuming products, as in the case of wine tourism described by Che and Wargenau (Chapter 13) and in farm-stay tourism in California (Chapter 11). These strategies are premised on creating connections and relationships between consumers and producers, often based on bringing the tourist to the production place to consume.

Tourism and agriculture interact in many different ways. In this book, we explore many of these links through tourism, agritourism, agro-tourism, ecotourism, nature/green tourism, farm stays, tourist food supplies, sustainable tourism, food festivals and museums and alternative food networks. In many countries, these links are relatively new and related to political transformation and rural restructuring as in Hungary (Chapter 2), Japan (Chapter 5), Mexico (Chapter 4) and Spain (Chapter 14) and involve policy and planning by local and national governments. This is particularly seen in Europe where LEADER projects funded by the European Union have been used to gain local government support of rural tourism as in Spain (Chapter 14) and Hungary (Chapter 2). Cox et al. in Chapter 10 note that the European Union has also stimulated rural tourism through ‘protected designation of origin’ or a ‘protected geographical indication’– appellations that identify and protect products from certain geographical origins or derived from artisanal methods. The initiatives for these changes may come from individual actions at the local level and from central government, or in the case of the European Union, pan-national-driven policies. In the chapters of this book, we examine tourism and agriculture relationships initiated at multiple scales in many different parts of the world.

Tourism has often been triggered by political change: as in Mexico with the adoption of neoliberal policies, in Spain with the end of fascism and in Hungary following the fall of Communism. In the latter two cases, the subsequent membership in the European Union led to freer movement of people. Rural tourism came later when the traditional tourist sites became crowded (beaches in Spain and Lake Balaton and Budapest in Hungary, Chapters 14 and 2, respectively). More recently, the search for an unspoiled environment as in the national parks of Hungary and England (Chapters 2 and 12, respectively) and in rural Spain became a major new attraction. Recent and growing interest in local food has further attracted tourists, especially in Europe, to rural areas as in Italy (Chapter 10). Interest in wine-growing areas has also attracted a special type of gourmet tourist as in California (Chapter 11), Michigan (Chapter 13) and Spain (Chapter 14), with tourism becoming a new form of marketing for wine producers. Japan has also started to see its rural areas as sites for tourism, in the form of farm stays, farmers’ markets and farm museums, as the number of growers declines, their average ages rise and rice production falls (Chapter 5).

Changes in global trade patterns with the loss of subsidized prices for traditional plantation export crops following new World Trade Organization rulings have forced many small tropical islands in the Pacific and Caribbean to turn to tourism as a new source of foreign exchange (Scheyvens and Momsen 2008a). Chapters 7 and 8 suggest that restructuring of the global food system (including the food crisis) provides an impetus for the islands to break free of the legacy of plantation economies through increased domestic production for greater food security and to reduce leakages. Thus, linkages between local agriculture and tourism are becoming ever more important. Former sugar and banana farmers are learning how to grow vegetables, salad crops and fruit for tourist hotels. Hotels are also being weaned from importing foods from the nearest metropolitan countries such as the United States for the Caribbean (Chapters 7–9) and Australia and New Zealand for the western Pacific (Chapter 6). There are, however, various factors that influence the ability of farmers to produce for and access tourism markets, including the nationality, size and structure of hotels (all-inclusive versus standard); the nationality and training of chefs; the business experience of rural entrepreneurs and the quality and reliability of local produce (Chapters 2, 3 and 6–9). The chapters in Part II of this volume are built upon a significant literature on tourism and agriculture linkages (for a review see Torres and Momsen 2004) to expand this scope of research integrating issues of global restructuring of agro-food systems, neoliberalism and tourism industry transition to all-inclusive models.

Tourists are turning from an interest traditionally limited to the three Ss of sun, sand and sea to a new curiosity for the cuisine of the Caribbean. On the whole, however, the Pacific Islands do not yet see their cuisine as a tourist attraction (Chapter 6). Making these linkages work has taken four decades of changing tourist tastes and a desire for local foods with improved specialist production by island farmers, with many of the innovators being expatriates or return migrants (Part II; Momsen 1998). The demonstration effect of tourist food tastes has also increased demand for fresh foodstuffs from local populations.

In the countries of the global South, tourism grew with the arrival of jet aircraft, which made long haul tourism possible from the 1960s. These countries soon saw tourism as the sine qua non of development and, especially for small islands, it has become the driv...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• PART I Tourism, agriculture and rural restructuring
• PART II Building tourism and agriculture linkages: challenges and potential
• PART III New forms of tourism and agriculture production and consumption
• Index