My Turn: How to abuse the agritourism system in New Hampshire

By JIM ZABLOCKI

For the Monitor

Published: 02-11-2021 6:00 AM

The New Hampshire Legislature, in RSA 21:34a, defines agritourism as attracting visitors to a farm to attend events or activities that are accessory uses to the primary farm operation.

Agritourism has been with us for many years. From hayrides to picking pumpkins to 4-H gatherings, many have enjoyed the ancillary activity that farms can offer. It can also gain more business for many small, struggling farms.

The challenge with agritourism is when it becomes the primary business and the farm itself becomes a backdrop for any events. This is when it can easily be abused and the original idea of agritourism goes awry.

If you follow the usual route of applying for permits, as a business, one of the first requirements is a site plan. You then will be subject to various reviews by different boards to see if your business plan fits the integrity and character of a rural district. But you skip this entire process just by calling yourself a farm.

How does this work? Well, farming can be a difficult endeavor, however you are allowed as a farm to help facilitate your income if other activities have some relation to farming. Everyone will agree that we need to help farmers to maintain the rural integrity of town. The opportunities are endless. Most things in life have some connection to farming.

The key is to call yourself a farm. You can start small, put in a small vegetable garden, maybe a quarter of an acre. You can plant tomatoes, pumpkins, various herbs, perhaps aromatic herbs. It doesn’t matter. Just establish it for a year.

If you have a barn or an outbuilding, you’re already halfway there.

You don’t need a barn; just make sure to call yourself a farm. You may need a building permit to put up a barn if one doesn’t exist already. Just make sure to explain the structure will be used for farming because that is where the real business will be.

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Here are two examples of how this process can affect your results. A few years ago in Warner, a business wanted to move to town and proposed to the town a gun range. It was turned down, even though there is already a gun range in the town. Had the applicant started a small farm first, the gun range would fit perfectly with the farm. Farms have a long history of guns used for controlling predators and protecting livestock. I suspect many farmers today already own guns.

So, you see, the gun range fits perfectly with farming and will add additional income to an already struggling business.

The second example takes a different tack. A business applies for an event center to rent out the barn to host business meetings, weddings, and other such large, social gatherings. It, too, is turned down because it would impair the integrity and character of the rural district.

A few years later, the business starts a small farm, but this time they develop the event-for-rent center with the blessing of the town because, you guessed it, they are now a farm. They don’t need a site plan review in Warner since, in memory, no farms have ever applied for a site review even though the town statutes state this is a requirement.

Just call yourself a farm. The beauty of this procedure for the farm is there is no town oversight. The town does not want to overburden struggling farms with any regulations.

Recently, the town of Warner wanted to have better oversight on ancillary farming operations; it was tabled to 2022.

The unfortunate result of all this is that it impacts many rural residents who are near such farms. Worse, it draws the farming community into the ugly side of how agritourism can be abused.

Agritourism is a time-honored farming tradition that shouldn’t have to defend itself from individuals who abuse the system.

State legislators need to take another pass at this law and put these event centers back under the commercial/retail headings where they belong and make actual, working farms the beneficiaries of agritourism as intended.

(Jim Zablocki of Warner has spent more than 45 years advising farms and greenhouses on propagation and production best practices.)

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