Return To Simpler Times With Agricultural Tours

Visiting a farm or ranch is fun and educational.  Country-Adventures' sellers would love to be your host.... click here for farm and ranch tour options.

The continuing popularity of agriculture travel shows that the industrialized world is a confusing place for the average American. Modern technology makes life easier, safer, and more convenient, yet it also more difficult to understand. During the course of a normal day, we constantly rely on machines whose workings most of us do not fully grasp, from automobiles, to computers, to the stock market. At best, we have a theoretical understanding of these inventions of civilization, with, perhaps, a specialized understanding of how just one or two of them work. However, even with our theoretical understanding, the world remains, for the most, run by confusing machines.

Agriculture Travel Is Travel Away From Modern Civilization

For this reason, it's something of a relief to become immersed in the day-to-day travails of running a farm. Of course, modern farms use industrial-age technology as well. Even pre-industrial farming technology and practices are sufficiently complicated that people need training to understand it. However, most people still think that the agricultural life is easier to wrap one's brain around than the industrial and post-industrial life, at least after sufficient training. Thence comes the popularity of agritourism in America--i.e. the practice of staying, and sometimes even working, on a farm or cattle ranch for vacation.

Farms Open Doors To Agricultural Tours

The technology of the industrial age has changed even the face of agriculture. Today's harvest machines, transportation, and crop growing techniques make large-scale farming operations possible--and very profitable. As a result, smaller farms must rely on agricultural tours to stay financially solvent, as they are out-competed by the larger farms with more financial resources at their disposal. Fortunately, the public's appetite for agritourism lets many small farms make a profit. Tourists willingly pay for the privilege of going to a small farmer's orchard to pick ripe apples, pears, and peaches directly from the trees.

Other farms let members of the public sample some of the traditional products made at the farm, such as cheese, honey, butter, and wine. The public can also learn about how butter is made the old-fashioned way, or about how bees are kept, or about the ages-old art of viticulture. Some farms even let people stay overnight for extended periods of time, and involve themselves, to varying degrees in the actual work of the farm--or at least ride horses.

Ranch Agritourism

Another popular manifestation of agritourism is the so-called "dude ranch." When the American frontier unofficially "closed" in the 1890's, many people began to romanticize the lifestyle of independent farmers and ranchers who raised cattle unhampered by the legal intervention of any government. To this day, Americans romanticize the cowboy--the ranch worker who rides horses and manages animals in an environment with no laws except those dictated by the wilderness itself. As a result, many working ranches have started to open their doors to tourists seeking an opportunity to live as a cowboy, if only for a little while. This is a form of agricultural tourism unique to the United States and Australia.