A2-How important a role do you think agritourism and/or culinary tourism are in the economy?

Session led by Cindy Vanderstar, tourism co-ordinator in Norfolk County

Participants: Gary Clarke, Arden Henry, Lilian Schaer, Hank-John Reinik, Elaine Massey

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Disappointed that there aren't more people in this session - culinary tourism is definitely a way forward to solve our issues.

Many farm groups tend to focus on larger issues and operations and aren't playing a sufficiently active role in helping to point out market opportunities, etc.

Many farmers view agritourism as an off-farm job - but it's all part of marketing; your opportunity to market local food in local restaurants.

Bigger picture is that if restaurants sell local food, people start to eat it leading to increasing demand both for farmers and the restaurants.

Consumers want experiences - eat in the field etc., not just buy products directly from the farmer. Can be challenging to recruit farmers to be vendors at markets.

Kingston market has increased the number of actual farmers who are vendors so that it is not just re-sellers. Letting the public talk to growers/farmers could help encourage young people into agriculture.

There are regulations involved with selling food to restaurants or at markets - different than if you are selling at "farm gate"

Confusion between Savour Ontario and Ontario Culinary Tourism Alliance - who is what and who does what? Too many groups trying to do the same thing can be confusing. How can you simply explain this to the public or to tourists - there can easily be three or more brands involved eg Savour Ontario, Savour Ottawa, etc. We don't need a whole series of local websites or brands - it would be easy to have a single website dedicated to a county or region.

Farmers can find it difficult to deal with consumers directly - shyness, too busy.

Lack of rural broadband access can be a problem or barrier to farmers participating in culinary tourism.

Huge movement around the world around sustainable tourism - addresses four pillars of society, economics, culture and environment. Culinary and agritourism are one aspect of this. Ontario hasn't recognized that sustainable tourism has become a mainstream movement.

There are many different government groups supporting these efforts - OMAFRA, Tourism etc. Should be more co-ordination to connect together the different culinary regions like Niagara, Norfolk, Prince Edward, Ottawa, Kingston. Govt could provide overall coordinating function. Maybe OTMP?

If we feel this is important, what do we do and how do we do it?

• participate in tourism competitiveness study chaired by Greg Sorbara
• government should fund programs for more than just one year to ensure longer term sustainability
• common branding and websites needed between regions - we need to be professional about this to promote us as a whole tourist destinations
• focus on co-operation - so that each group doesn't reinvent the wheel each time
• more direct interest from larger farm groups - to help facilitate communications with their members about what the opportunities are for farmers to add income to their farm groups
• work to increase local awareness as well - how can we be our own ambassadors to bring tourists in if our own people don't know what we have?

We need someone to connect the dots for us - do tourists care about county lines? It would be nice if there was a single co-ordinator of the regional "local food maps" to save costs and provide tourists with consistent information across all the regions.

The two big problems are lack of sustainable funding and lack of co-ordination.

One year is not enough time to make an initiative self-sustaining, eg OCTA. This group has been given some funding but only for a short amount of time and very few resources. Often start-up or project funding is limited in duration which can hinder an initiative before it even gets off the ground.

OCTA might be a good start to a single co-ordinating voice/agency to be an umbrella organization. We need some serious provincial commitment to make this work.

It's an uphill battle at this point.