Balancing Farms, Tourist Sites Poses Local Challenge

The rise of the farm-to-fork movement has been accompanied by the growing popularity of agritourism, as more landowners open their ranches to people who want to experience the bucolic views of the countryside. But the proliferation of event centers, wedding venues and bed-and-breakfast inns on agricultural land has also increased tensions between those landowners and surrounding farms that see their normal activities impacted by nearby events. Farm animals are a popular attraction at agritourism destinations, which provide farmers a new venue to market their crops and bring in additional income.  Chris Scheuring, an environmental attorney for the California Farm Bureau Federation, said the problem has less to do with agritourism and more to do with nonagricultural uses in rural areas that are incompatible with agriculture and interfere with farmers' ability to farm. Agritourism operations are more appropriate, he said, when what they do is "ancillary to existing agricultural operations, rather than just somebody coming in and plopping down a big wedding center that really isn't agriculture and calling it that."