Agri-tourism as enterprise diversification in rural Haryana
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Date
2008
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
CCSHAU
Abstract
Tourism is termed as instrument for employment generation, poverty alleviation
and sustainable human development. The state of Haryana has location advantage being
nearer to national capital of country, Delhi. There are five National Highways that pass
via Haryana to different states of the country. Moreover, the farmers of Haryana are
resourceful and innovative and have capability to start this new concept of agri-tourism,
therefore. This project on agri-tourism was planned to be studied in Haryana state.
Agri-tourism being new concept; it was difficult to find large number of farmers for this
profession. A list of 80 farmers was prepared, who were either registered with Haryana
tourism or were having equivalent capacity to provide all types of facilities on their
farms. They were taken as the respondents of the study.
The data revealed that majority of the respondents were belonging to medium
category regarding almost all the independent variables viz. age, family education, land
holding, socio-economic status, mass media exposures, risk bearing capacity,
innovativeness, extension contacts, source of income, man power availability and
irrigation facility. The owners of the agri-tourism farms were either already providing
or they were ready to provide various kinds of facilities on demand, which were very
common and people usually asked for ,while majority of the owners were not providing
the facilities which were not commonly asked by the visitors.
Regarding visits paid by the various groups it was recorded that as
many as 3290 visitors in all, visited various agri-tourism units at different places under
study, out of which there were 9 International visitors, 488 national visitors. There were
as many as 1698 visitors from the surrounding city areas which come to be the 51.61
per cent of the total population of visitors. In total about two fifth of the total tourists
visited different agri-tourism units at different places under study were the
children. The number of visitors who visited agri-tourism units in the winter season was
more than twice of the visitors who visited in the summer season.
Among various kinds of tourism, agri-tourism was found very much
related with rural tourism. The findings depicted that majority of the respondents were
either self motivated or motivated by their family members. When asked about their
interest and needs for various training programme, almost all the farmers showed their
interest in obtaining the trainings for the diversification and development of their farm
in to agri-tourism and none of the respondents preferred a training of more than a
fortnight duration.
More than three-fourth of the respondents agreed upon that diversification of
traditional farming into agri-tourism was beneficial and it will add to their present
income. Also the majority were in favor of that agri-tourism provides a natural
environment and it is very eco-friendly.
When asked about the benefits of agri-tourism it was found beneficial in
many regards such as their status in the society will be increased. A massive majority
said that additional income from the agri-tourism was the most important prospect.
The major constraint in the development of agri-tourism was the difficulty in getting a
loan or the lack of financial facilities.
Description
Keywords
Economic systems, biological phenomena, Area, Productivity, Manpower, Land resources, Economics, Technological changes, Environment, Irrigation