Agri-tourism and Farmer Producer Organizations: Leveraging Non-farm Incomes

This paper has highlighted the potential of agri-tourism, which is a sector that can contribute significantly to farmer's income by an extra dimension to his farming activity with relatively lower investment requirement. The World Tourism organization has estimated that the tourism industry is growing at the rate of 4 per cent a year and the sector is expected to continue on this growth strategy despite economic fluctuations. Moreover, tourism also has the ability to complement agriculture's seasonal nature of activity. In recent years, agri-tourism models have shown significant progress in India. However, greater push is needed on the institutional front to establish a model that can be scaled up at the national level. Research has shown that collaborative farmer groups at the grassroots, and many collaborative farmer groups, especially Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs), are better placed and more adept to successfully manage tourism enterprises. The paper discusses the prospects to agritourism as an alternate source of livelihood with emphasis on Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs).