Agro-tourism; The best thing since cassava bread

Agro-Tourism: the best thing since cassava bread

Every adult in the Caribbean can define tourism and recite real and imagined benefits of that industry. Interestingly, when asked about agro-tourism, the stock response is about people visiting farms and helping to harvest produce. This narrow concept of what agro-tourism entails is not limited to people outside of the agricultural sector. Whilst most will agree that Agribusiness involves any link between agriculture and business there is less of a sense that all the links between agriculture and tourism are covered by the agro-tourism rubric. Additionally, it is not clear that everyone in the Caribbean makes the connection between agriculture and food; food can be had in many countries in the absence of a strong agricultural sector. Many Caribbean consumers look to their respective Minister of Trade for pronouncements on food prices and availability.

It is the expanded interpretation of agro-tourism that can be seen as the best thing since cassava bread. Agro-tourism incorporates the strengthening of culinary tourism where the guest consumes food and beverages made from locally grown produce. The guest’s activities may also include a visit to a farm, market, processing facility, distillery or other agro-industrial complex. Recognition of green spaces, hotel gardens, aquaria, in-house plant décor, rural landscapes, “farmscapes”, heritage parks, outdoor museums, seine-pulling, lake and marine sport-fishing, and beachfront parks as fillips to tourism highlight agriculture’s influence.

Caribbean leaders are openly admitting that the traditional vision of tourism as involving sun, sea and sand has to be reoriented. Visitors are seeking authentic experiences that can be easily incorporated into the realms of the flora and fauna of the region. Agriculture is about the husbanding of plants and animals within natural or manipulated environments. There are no limits to the kinds of authentic experiences one can amass by interfacing with these natural or manipulated environments. Touring a plantation, eating food grown and prepared using traditional techniques, enjoying handicraft made with indigenous plants, and purchasing leather craft are all agriculture-based experiences that appease tourist appetites for memorable experiences.

Lest the reader concludes that all of this is pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking, award-winning tours, parks and culinary experiences dot the Caribbean landscape from Guyana in the south to Jamaica in the north. From well-established train tours in St Kitts to heritage parks of more recent vintage in Mainstay, Guyana: agro-tourism is opening up opportunities for education and commerce. These links are not new, in the 1980s one of the most successful and comprehensive Sugar Factory tours was conducted by the late Melford O’Flaharty in Nevis. That was as effective an outdoor museum as can be found anywhere in the world. Mamiku Gardens in St Lucia incorporates pristine landscaping and rich history to provide a renowned tourist destination. The gardens contain a wide range of tropical plants, orchids, herbs, and several secluded secret gardens. The rest of the estate is a plantation comprising banana, passion fruit and mangoes.

In this era of acknowledged Climate Change there are already indications that the sun, sea and sand experience can be acquired at higher latitudes, thereby reducing the number of reasons to travel into traditional, more equatorial regions. Agro-tourism improves the likelihood of a unique experience through links to the natural ecosystem, the agricultural ecosystem, the social environment and the cultural inheritance. Additionally, European tourists in particular are concerned about their carbon footprint and increasingly do not want to contribute to additional “food-miles”. Food-miles is a term which refers to the distance food is transported from the time of its production until it reaches the consumer. It is one dimension used in assessing the environmental impact of food. Locally produced food, sustainable production techniques, environmental protection and significant biodiversity are agriculture-influenced drawing cards for eco-sensitive tourists.

Agro-tourism runs the entire gamut. It includes farm-based accommodation as can be attained at Rainbow Nature Resort, Tobago, where the hotel is part of a producing fifty-acre farmstead. Conformably it also includes outdoor agro-historical museums as the agro-processing history trail under construction at Montaque in St Vincent and the Cassava processing facility in Tapakuma, Guyana, which is part of the Tri-Lakes community suite of Amerindian tourism products. Agro-tourism is poised to be the next best thing since authentic Tapakuma cassava bread. Will the powers-that-be harness it or await an influx of traditional tourists if and when oil prices and airfares ever come down?