When you listen to the word “Agriculture”, your mind is instinctively drawn towards an environment where nature is manifested in the shape of crops, trees, plants, water bodies, livestock and many more. And you may also be reminded of your favorite fruits like banana, apple, mangoes, etc. and vegetables that you are buying from the market. Have you ever thought, how you will feel if you get an opportunity of being surrounded by such an environment and plucking your favorite fruits yourself from the trees. Think how your children will feel about it or even spending a day or a night there. Yes, Agro Tourism is all about that.

And why do you think about a “tour” away from your usual place of swelling? Definitely, you want to get a respite from your mundane life- to spend few days with your kids and entertain them. The conventional places of touring are the historical places or a hill station or where you can enjoy ‘nature’ in its wilderness.

You must be looking for some new niche of tourism that provides your basic requirements for ‘tour” such as fun, pleasure, entertainment, excitement, thrill, adventure, new acquaintances and above all a novel type of ‘touring experience’. Agro Tourism provides all these. It is a hybrid of ‘agriculture’ and ‘tourism’.

If you are looking for an authentic experience that might link you and your kids to learn something new about the hitherto unknown ‘behind the scene’ activities of farming- agricultural, poultry, fishing, goat rearing, pig rearing, dairy farming etc, you can select a good agro-tourism center where you can spend a day or a sojourn with your family. There are a number of farmhouses and ranches, exclusively designed to offer pleasure, fun, and entertainment to the visitors. You can pick berries, see animals, buy some agricultural products; fresh and cheaper and can know how different farms operate. Besides, you can have other agro-tourism-based experiences such as farm lodging, hiking and hunting, fishing, pumpkin patches, wine testing, corn maze, and farm festivals u-pick farms.

Agro Tourism being a new niche of tourism, there are not many sources to get the required information about where to visit or how to select a good agro-tourism center that would provide you a truly educative and entertaining agro-oriented experience. Therefore, you should consider the following tips while selecting an agro-tourism center.

1. Facilities Offered

Kids get the most out of an agro-tourism center. Therefore, facilities for an educational tour of children, petting zoos, pumpkin picking, arts or crafts or picking out a Christmas tree “pick your own” fruit; vegetable and crops will suit them most. There should be earmarked spaces to facilitate the playing of games, individually or in-group. There must be enough of safety measures provided so that children are not put to any hazard.

2. Parking Facilities

There should be secured parking facilities for vehicles with the proper watch and guard so that if you are sojourning in the farmhouse, your vehicle is safe and secure.

3. Cleanliness and Well-maintained

The center you intend to visit should be maintaining a clean and hygienic environment; otherwise your visit and stay there may lead to some kind of health hazards for you or for your kids. There should be provision for ‘First Aid’ to meet to any emergent situation.

4. Sanitary and Accessible Bathrooms

There should be provision for well-maintained bathroom.

5. Facility for Buying

The farm should be selling the farm products at discounted rates. For seasonal products, they must be accepting advance money for selling their products such as mazes, during the next harvesting season.

Besides the above, you may try to get more information from the guidebooks available in your local bookshop or you may order one from the available sources.