Updated October 2026
Here’s an outline of the support currently available to support agritourism development across Australia.
Additionally, our blog has many supportive articles on agritourism development.
Agritourism support and advocacy networks
Connect with peers and benefit from the advocacy of these farmer-led networks and member organisations.
Australian Agritourism Development Facebook group
National support
Tourism Research Australia
TRA provides statistics on agritourism visitation, including agritourism activity factsheets for six types of agritourism activities including farm tours, and winery and brewery visits, and a 2025 report on agritourism visitation.
Tourism Australia
Tourism Australia has factsheets on agritourism customers (e.g those that like farm experiences, staying at wineries or in agricultural regions, tasting trails, glamping, and seeing wildlife in its natural environment, for example.)
Australian Regional Tourism
In 2022, Australian Regional Tourism developed the Agritourism 2030 Strategy, and takes its recommendations to Federal Tourism and Agriculture Ministers to ask for support for initiatives that will it easier for farmers to diversify into tourism.
Australian Regional Tourism also has two toolkits for farmers and Councils:
Enabling Agritourism – A Guide for Farmers Planning to Diversify
This guide has been created for farmers who are interested in diversifying their farm to include a tourism business.
Enabling Agritourism – Paving the Way for Successful Development Applications
This guide has been created for local governments who want to support agritourism growth in their region
Agritourism development coaching and training
Wine Australia has a free online course to help Australian wineries welcome back international travellers: Wine Tourism Ready.
Agritourism development consultancies Tilma Group, Regionality, and Sparrowly Group have agritourism development programs to enable farmers to develop and grow agritourism.
Farmers can undertake formal training on agritourism online:
Training.gov.au offers a Diploma on Agritourism Operations
ACS Distance Education offers a course on Farm Tourism
Australian Online Courses also has a course on Farm Tourism
Space design
Tourism architects Studio S2 Architects offer a three free design guides for agritourism experiences (cellar doors, food tourism spaces, and farm and manufacturing tourism)
Grants
One-off grant opportunities (and training opportunities) open up throughout the year, so sign up for notifications from the federal Grant Connect website and subscribe to your state grant website and your state and regional tourism organisations’ industry newsletters.
Tilma Group supports grant applications.
States
NSW
The NSW government simplified planning legislation to make it easier for farmers to use their land for agritourism. Read this simple guide to understand which types of agritourism experiences a NSW farmer can offer on their farm.
Destination NSW provides online training on agritourism.
These regions also provide support to farmers:
Destination Central West has developed and combined resources to support agritourism development in their region. In this region, Bathurst, Oberon and Lithgow Councils have agritourism development resources for local farmers (developed by Tilma).
Destination Riverina Murray has an agritourism development strategy - its situation analysis outlines insights into gaps (opportunities!) in agritourism offerings. They have also developed and combined resources to support agritourism development in their region.
Cootamundra-Gundagai Regional Council has resources to support agritourism development in their region, as well as inspiring agritourism case studies from around Australia (developed by Tilma).
Tasmania
Tourism Tasmania identified agritourism as a significant opportunity for the state with 70% of visitors experiencing agritourism during their stay.
To make it easier for agritourism businesses to get established in Tasmania, the Tasmanian Government created a toolkit for farmers: the Tasmanian Agritourism Toolkit: Navigating the regulatory process.
Queensland
Queensland farmers can learn business, tourism and hospitality skills in free microcredential skill building courses.
Queensland has been implementing its Agritourism Roadmap. Queensland Farmer’s Federation’s Unlocking Queensland’s agritourism potential discussion paper builds on the Roadmap, identifying challenges and opportunities for agritourism as an emerging sector, and proposing a sliding scale of regulation that recognises the different ways farmers engage with agritourism.
According to the paper, Queensland’s onerous and complex land use regulations do not solve the intractable problems and limit the growth of this valuable regional industry. To enable Queensland farmers to innovate, a new regulatory framework that is clear, consistent and easy for farmers to navigate is required to open up the benefits of agritourism.
Northern Territory
With large pastoral properties in the Territory, the NT’s Drive Tourism Strategy identified an opportunity to develop them into visitor experiences. Case studies of station agritourism experiences were developed to share learnings with pastoralists.
South Australia
A review in 2021 recommended changes to planning approvals to enable agritourism developments.
Tourism SA now has resources to support agritourism development, including
a new plan for the agritourism sector
a comprehensive guide for farmers interested in agritourism
multiple factsheets to help navigate planning legislation and compliance
an agritourism toolkit including resources such as a factsheet on agritourism customers.
Western Australia
In 2021, WA undertook research to identify agritourism’s target markets in WA.
Victoria
In Victoria, there has been no state focus on developing agritourism, but Regional Development Australia (RDA) Hume, which covers the Goulburn and Ovens Murray regions and Tourism North East identified the types of people interested in agritourism and what they expect from agritourism experiences, and developed agritourism action plans.
Stay connected
Join our free Facebook group Australian Agritourism Development to connect with other agritourism operators, ask questions, learn of grant and training opportunities, and learn from case studies of successful agritourism businesses.
If you know of resources to support agritourism that have not been mentioned here, please share them into the group.
How Tilma supports agritourism development
Two of Tilma’s team are or have been beef producers, and the third’s partner is a beef producer while she herself is a permaculturalist.
Tilma’s Director initiated and led Australian Regional Tourism’s agritourism development work during the 7 years she was a director on ART’s board.
Today, as regional tourism development consultants, we
Support agritourism operators and events with strategic mentoring on developing viable appealing new experiences and improvements
Develop plans for new agritourism experiences and events that appeal to contemporary travellers
Help secure grants for agritourism development projects
Write agritourism development plans for destinations.