Understanding barriers for and information seeking strategies by agritourism entrepreneurs in New England

Using a large-scale field survey conducted in New England, this article explored barriers and information seeking strategies for large (annual grow income > $50,000) and small agritourism (annual gross income < $50,000) farms. Access to financing and capital and access to labor were the most common barriers for all agritourism farms in our sample. Small Farms had more issues with access to network and support systems, while Large Farms had more concerns in accessing market and customers. The most popular, yet might not be the most sufficient source of information to deal with barriers was other farms, friends, family, and relatives for all farms in our sample. In general large farms were more likely to seek information from a variety of sources compared to small farms. There is a need to offer agritourism entrepreneurs more opportunities to exchange and share information by improving networking capacity, beyond traditional education and training in establishing agritourism ventures.