چکیده:
Farm tourism is not a new phenomenon. Frater (1983) recognized that in certain parts of Europe, it existed as a recognizable activity for over a hundred years; Frater (1982) also identified a number of changes in British agriculture over the last 50 years: a declining labour force, changing farm structure, increased intensification and specialization of farming activities, together with a decline in farm income. The inability to generate sufficient revenue has, in many cases, led farmers to diversify from the agricultural base (Rickard, 1983; Fleischer & Pizam, 1997) and undertake pluriactivity; to this end, Bowler, Clark, Crockett, Ilbery and Shaw (1996) describe a decision-making model for paths of farm business development. Farm tourism has been primarily developed for its economic benefits and represents a symbiotic relationship for areas where neither farming or tourism could be independently justified (Inskeep, 1991); Elson, Steenberg and Wilkinson (1995) add that the two primary concerns of the farmer have been to: generate additional income and provide economic benefits to the local economy. There has been a continuity in farm tourism research since the early 1960s, with key studies by Bull and Wibberley (1976) and Clarke (1996a) who argued that agriculturalists view tourism as a category of farm diversification whereas tourism researchers consider it to be a sector of rural tourism in its own right.