Agritourism Development Program
Cootamundra-Gundagai
Cootamundra-Gundagai Regional Council near Wagga Wagga in NSW’s food bowl, the Riverina region, is one of Australia’s leading Councils for proactively developing agritourism.
The region’s agriculture ranges from broadacre cropping and cattle in the north around Cootamundra to smaller landholdings, wineries and sheep in the south around Gundagai, and rich Wiradjuri agricultural history across the region.
Project purpose
In 2018, Council developed a Rural Land Issues Paper on the opportunities of agricultural tourism.
Based on the Paper’s findings, in 2020, Council secured a grant to create an Agritourism Development Plan to guide Council’s activities to grow agritourism offerings and visitation to the region.
Project overview
To develop the Agritourism Development Plan we began by developing an audit of existing, past, and potential agritourism experiences to help Council understand what kinds of experiences are already on offer, and be able to connect with the farmers delivering them.
The Plan identified a need for an ongoing agritourism development program to build the capacity of farmers to develop new, or grow existing, agritourism experiences - to elevate and expand agritourism offerings in the region.
In 2022, Council secured further funding and in 2023, hired Tilma Group to develop and deliver an agritourism development program.
We researched thoroughly what content should be included to help farmers understand the opportunities of agritourism, understand the tourism industry’s key players and what support they provide, and how to develop a new agritourism experience.
Project outcomes - several Australian firsts
To our knowledge, this project was an innovative first in Australia; we know of no other
Council that secured funding for, planned, and delivered such a comprehensive, multi-faceted local capacity building and agritourism development project.
‘One stop shop’ for farmers, particularly NSW farmers, to find all the information they needed in one place to support the development of an agritourism offering on their farm (There were none at the time the project was begun.)
Agritourism mentoring program that has been so comprehensive and generous, with up to twelve hours of one-on-one personalised mentoring by a regional tourism development expert.
Agritourism mentoring program where the skills of Council staff to support agritourism development were improved simultaneously with agritourism operators and farmers.
Agritourism mentoring program delivered remotely as this was using video conference technology.
The project could be considered best practice though its use of
Comprehensive research to inform inclusions, such as Service NSW for Business’ report on the pain points of farmers in developing agritourism and types of farmers who offer agritourism experiences, and statistics on agritourism visitors available, such as through Tourism Australia and Destination NSW (and much more!).
Consultation of local agritourism operators and farmers in the development of the inclusions of the Program.
The agritourism development guides include
How to develop a business case (including a business case template)
Risk management (including a risk management plan template)
Marketing (including a marketing plan template)
With agritourism being a rapidly growing sector, and new support being made available regularly, these graphic-designed guides were designed as Word documents so Council could update them as new resources for agritourism development become available. In fact, during the course of delivering this project, new resources became available from Destination NSW.
We then delivered a 10-week mentoring program. Nine participants from eight farms worked on a wide variety of offerings:
New agritourism events, including seasonal local produce lunches, farm open days, and potentially a sunflower festival
New farm stay short term accommodations
Marketing tactics to deliver business objectives such as attract a new market (midweek visitors and weddings), increase occupancy, or launch a new experience
A new farm tour and art workshops
A new night wildlife spotting tour with astrology and storytelling.
A new self-guided Wiradjuri tour
A new plant nursery with coffee
The different needs of the established agritourism operators and new-to-agritourism farmers, as well as the differences in the products being developed, required a flexible, tailored approach to delivering the business coaching.
Each mentee ended the program with an action plan, and other support, depending on their needs, such as a marketing plan or a risk management plan.
At the end of the mentoring, Tilma Group delivered a series of webinars of inspiring case studies, with guest presenters showcasing different best-practice agritourism offerings, with learnings for farmers developing or growing an agritourism offering.
The recorded webinars were added to Council’s online agritourism development portal.
Referee
Linda Wiles
Manager Business
Cootamundra-Gundagai Regional Council
1300 459 689
linda.wiles@cgrc.nsw.gov.au
