Perspectives of Agritourism in Himachal Pradesh: A New Dimension in Hill Agricultural Diversification

The synergetic interaction of primary sector agriculture and service sector tourism is new way of generating more income from limited resources by the farmers while gratifying tourist need to be close to nature is agritourism. Farmers of Himachal Pradesh have small land holdings. They cannot sustain on agriculture as per future family requirements. Introduction of tourist in beautiful hill farms of the state have scope to diversify agriculture and generate more income from the same piece of land. Though the state has vast agritourism potential having beautiful farms and huge tourist inflow increasing year after year, sta te government have not started any specific plan for agritourism development. Various development programmes in agriculture and tourist separately has contributed to agritourism in the state. The present paper conceptualizes agritourism in the state describing scope, contributing factors, associated problems, initiatives, and an attempt to pave out future path has been made through this study.