Agritourism – From Additional Income to Livelihood Strategy and Rural Development

Abstract

During the Romantic period, the Franconian Jura in northern Bavaria, Germany, was discovered as an attractive landscape with aesthetic value. The diversified cultural landscape (rocks, forests, and farmland) and its seasonal variations in land cover are appreciated by tourists to this day, albeit in different form and use made of the scenic beauty. With the modernization and restructuring of agriculture in the 1970s, farming families increasingly seized the opportunity to play a role in rural tourism. In the last three decades, offering holidays on the farm as well as direct sales of their own value- added farms' products have provided additional alternative incomes. The article draws on a longitudinal study (1977 - 2007) which focused on the farming women's agency, coping strategies, visions and wishes against the dynamic changes of the agricultural sector. The rich data enabled the author to give an overview of tourism-related activities within the sample from the point of view of the farming women as well as to construct two case studies that looked at the role of agritourism within the pluri-activities for the women involved and the multifunctional orientation of their farms. While agritourism has become an important permanent livelihood strategy for some farming families, it remains an additional income for others. Either way, it has turned out to be a source of women's growing self-confidence as well as a sustainable ingredient of regional development. Keyword: Agritourism, restructuring of agriculture, feminization, women's visibility, peasant principle, pluriactivity, multifunctionality, rural development.