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Agritourism destinations support farmers, stimulate local economies

By Clayton Baumgarth

Posted October 13, 2022

Lark Ranch's location in Greenfield. The Lark family has been growing this attraction since 2002, adding new activities every year. (Courtesy of Lark Ranch)

Lark Ranch started out as a simple pumpkin patch, but has grown to include amusement rides, food trucks, ziplines, farm animal encounters and more. Adam Lark, operations manager at the Loogootee location, estimates the farm welcomes from 7,000 to 10,000 people every weekend.

Lark Ranch is celebrating its 20^th anniversary this year. According to Lark, his father started the destination as a way to celebrate rural life.

“He went to law school and became an attorney. He practiced mainly out of Indianapolis, but he always … wanted to get back to those farming roots,” he said. “And the opportunity came up to buy this farm down here.”

Outside of running their rural destination, the Lark family harvests corn, soybeans, flowers, cattle, and chickens. Lark said the business always tries to differentiate income streams among agriculture, amusement, and other ventures like renting out carnival rides to third parties. It’s a lot to juggle, and it prompts the question ”why not focus on just farming?”

“We've seen with other family farms, as time goes on…you kind of have your set fixed amount of ground, you know, buying more ground every year becomes more and more expensive,” Lark said. “Instead of just staying small and eventually having one guy farming it and then it's three boys, and they’re fighting over that same farm, you know, we thought that by trying to grow and expand other businesses, it would just take that pressure off.”

The Larks aren’t alone. As input costs rise for farming and expenses continue to pile up, it’s becoming more difficult to solely focus on agriculture. Many farmers are finding other ways to supplement their income like opening wedding venues on their property, creating walking and bicycling tours, and planting cut-your-own-Christmas-tree farms in order to make ends meet.

In other words, they’re turning to agritourism.

Caroline Patrick, director of the Indiana Grown program with the Indiana State Department of Agriculture, said it’s a trend the state is well aware of.

“I think more and more you're seeing businesses close. You're seeing farmers that are not wanting to be sustained by family members or needing additional resources to be able to staff that farm, people are making really hard decisions,” she said. “So being able to attend these agritourism events throughout the year really helps them to drive their business and it really allows them to have more cash flow coming in and be able to support their business more long-term than maybe if they had just strictly stuck with row crops.”

Agritourism destinations not only benefit the farmers that run them, but the communities in which they’re located. “When you spend your money locally, we found that 70 cents on every dollar stays within the community,” she said.

As the 10^th largest farming state in the country, Indiana is in a strong position in the agritourism industry. “Because of our unique landscape as far as the agriculture that we currently have within the state, it really gives us the opportunity to expand upon that and have consumers enjoy it all year round,” Patrick said.

If you’re interested in checking out one of the more than 300 agritourism destinations in the state for yourself, visit the Indiana Grown website.