Everyone has looked at their farm or ranch at one point and thought to themselves, “We could start a little agritourism enterprise here. How hard can it be?”

Well, before you buy the pumpkin seeds, invite movie location scouts or put up that barn for a rustic wedding venue, you might want to take a beat and think your plan through.

Been there, tried that

That was the advice from a panel of experts who spoke on adding enterprises like these and others in February, during the 2022 Cattlemen’s College in Houston.

Andrew Donnell operates Donnell Century Farm, near Jackson, Tenn. The farm is a working row crop and Angus cattle operation; but it also has an agritourism enterprise, and it offers direct sales of beef from the family’s herd. Donnell said he knew, when returning to the family farm, that he needed to add some sort of enterprise to sustain multiple generations. The family started out selling production at the nearby farmers markets on Saturdays, and that has evolved into an agritourism destination for area families to enjoy year-round. During the pandemic, they also expanded their commercial kitchen, partnered up with a local butcher, and started selling their ranch-raised Angus beef to consumers who were unable to find beef in their stores.

Steve Wooten and his family run the Beatty Canyon Ranch, in drought-prone southeastern Colorado. The ranch was the national 2020 Environmental Stewardship Award winner. This ranch supports three generations with its day-to-day operations, which include a cow herd, as well as hunting and environmental and historical tourism ventures that were begun in the 1990s and have expanded today.

Stephanie Mock is the sustainability manager for Kualoa Ranch, on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. This 4,000-acre ranch was purchased in 1850 from King Kamehameha by Dr. Gerrit P. Judd. The seventh and eighth generation of the Judd family still farm and ranch on the land, and they’ve been able to do so by adding tourism ventures to their crop and livestock production, starting in the 1980s. The ranch may be familiar to many — it has been used as a location in movies and television, including the “Jurassic Park” films.

Think differently

The panel agreed that as you consider adding an enterprise to your family’s farm or ranch, you need to consider what that particular enterprise’s impact might be on the day-to-day operations of raising crops and livestock. The goal is to add to the farm, not wind up with an operation that takes labor or resources away from the farm.

For example, on the Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado, Wooten said it was important that their added enterprises work in cooperation with the conservation practices already in place on their grazing lands.

“In the early 1990s we started with ranch vacations and hunting,” Wooten said. “We choose for the wildlife and our cattle to get the natural resources. Nothing we add to the operation can be competitive with those two income streams. It was important that they not be consumptive of our natural resources.”

The panel offered these 10 points of advice for others considering added business enterprises: