Family farms dig tourism
Cary Aspinwall
The Arizona Republic
November. 25, 2005 12:00 AM
A handful of Arizona farmers are selling their family farms to tourists instead of land developers.
The new "agritourism" attractions open the farms to visitors, encouraging them to spend money while learning where their food comes from.
For farmers who want to hang onto their land and lifestyle without going broke, agritourism is emerging as a viable option across the country and in Arizona.
Agritourism has long been the bread and butter of Schnepf Farms in Queen Creek and Young's Farm in Dewey, and now the Southwest's largest dairy is getting in the game.
In Stanfield, west of Casa Grande, Shamrock Farms launched a tour program this month geared toward children and families. With a cow-spotted tram rolling visitors through the cow "spa" and calf nursery before hauling everyone back to a big red barn for milk and ice cream, the tour program is a mix of education and marketing.
The recently opened Queen Creek Olive Mill hopes to lure visitors and their spending money with its "press your own olive oil" experience and gourmet olive products.
Schnepf Farms' annual fall festival and Six-Flags-meets-Green-Acres set-up attracts about 250,000 visitors each year. It was featured in a recent American Airlines' in-flight magazine article about family farms turning to agritourism.
Some are betting the farm on staying afloat through agritourism, at a time when most Valley farms continue to give way to housing developments.
About half of the Valley's land that is now urban was once used for farming, according to Arizona State University's Center for Business Research. If the density pattern found in 2000 continues, the metro area's growth will consume an additional 300 square miles per decade, or roughly an area the size of New York City. That likely means more local farms biting the dust as the Valley continues to sprawl.
Even the owners of Young's Farm, a popular fall attraction with its Thanksgiving turkeys and pumpkin patch, announced earlier this year their plans to sell their land to developers in 2006. Next year may be the last chance Arizonans have to order a Young's farm turkey for Thanksgiving.
But the handful of Arizona farms turning to agritourism for profits instead mirrors a larger national trend, said Cary Blake, spokesman for the Arizona Farm Bureau.
Farmers are looking for niche ways to get more of the consumer's food dollar because they face competition from all across the world, he said.
But it's not just about increasing profits, he said. Educating consumers is also important because too many children grow up in the United States thinking food comes from the grocery store, Blake said.
"They're bringing the farm to the city person and the city person learns more about agriculture and where food comes from," Blake said.
At the inaugural Shamrock Farms tour last week, about 200 students from Stanfield Elementary School saw how cows were milked and came nose-to-nose with baby calves. The tour program was part of a master plan for expansion when Shamrock moved its dairy farm from Chandler Heights to Stanfield in 2004.
The Schnepfs' fourth-generation family farm is one of the last family owned and operated farms left in Queen Creek. In addition to hosting regular public events, the family still farms more than 200 acres of vegetables, hay, peaches, apricots and plums.
Across from Schnepf Farms is where Perry Rea opened his agritourism venture, the Queen Creek Olive Mill. After leaving behind a career in auto-parts manufacturing, he studied olive farming and olive-oil production in Italy before planting the trees in 1997 at his farm near the San Tan Mountains.
There, he grows eight different olives, including Kalamata and Manzanillo olives, and produces dipping oils, infused oils and extra virgin olive oil, among other products.
The growing of olives started as a hobby, but demand for gourmet gifts led him to the idea of giving tours and opening a store.
"People do a lot of 'ooh-ing' and 'ahh-ing' when they come in here, cause they see the olive oil getting made here and they had no idea," Rea said. "The tours have been unbelievable. We start tours at 9 a.m. and we are not sitting down until 4 p.m. There are two of us giving the tours and we're hoarse by the end of the day."
Copyright 2005 The Arizona Republic.
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