Agritourism is a viable option for farms looking to diversify their revenue streams, educate their neighbors and customers about agriculture, and share the joy that their farm offers. While optimism is preferred, preparing a crisis communications plan before it’s needed can aid in the farm’s resilience. Ideally, it becomes a practice that helps the agritourism operation prevent and mitigate threats. Good communication practices are part of any successful business, including communicating during a crisis. 
Whether dealing with visitor safety incidents, foodborne illness outbreaks, or extreme weather events, having a plan in place ensures a quick, coordinated response that protects customers, maintains public trust, and supports business continuity. This fact sheet provides an overview of a crisis communication plan for agritourism operators, with elements to include when creating one for the operation.
Agritourism is increasingly popular in Connecticut and throughout the Northeastern United States, in part because there are over 5,000 farms in Connecticut, with an average size of 74 acres. The Northeast also has 17% of the United States population. While this makes direct-to-consumer sales, agricultural education, and economic vitality more attainable, it also creates land use challenges.
Many farms have or plan to add forms of agritourism that align with their business offerings, from pick-your-own to recreational opportunities. In Connecticut, fruit and tree nut farms have the highest crop value from agritourism, followed by aquaculture.
Adding an agritourism component to a farm serves many purposes, including diversifying revenue sources, creating community connections, and providing agricultural education and literacy to non-farm audiences. While farmers are familiar with everyday challenges of running their operations, agritourism adds new considerations, such as visitor safety, liability concerns, and crisis response.
Although farmers may not be able to prevent a crisis from happening, the way they communicate can significantly impact their reputation and long-term success.
This fact sheet outlines six key steps for developing a crisis communication plan, integrating it with risk management strategies, business planning and operational policies.
- Know your audiences
- Draft plans for various scenarios
- Review legal responsibilities
- Address insurance considerations
- Build and strengthen community partnerships
- Practice the plan and revise as needed
Using the following guidelines to create a plan can help agritourism operations maintain safety and their farm’s reputation.
Step 1: Know Your Audiences
Agritourism operations have many audiences. Farm visitors are usually top of mind, but the crisis communications plan should also include neighbors, employees, community leaders, and the local media.
Each of these audiences has distinct needs, and messaging will vary during a crisis depending on their needs and the situation. The first step in crisis communications planning is identifying these audiences and preparing a contact list for key stakeholders within each audience. Having this information available and accessible ahead of time facilitates smoother communication.
Step 2: Draft Plans for Various Scenarios
During step two, farmers can get creative and draft a list of all the various scenarios that might occur at their agritourism operation, necessitating a crisis communications plan. Browse the National Ag Law Center case law index for scenarios to include. Many agritourism operations should include scenarios for injuries to guests and employees, extreme weather, negative animal incidents, and food safety.
Pick a few scenarios that would be most detrimental to the agritourism operation and develop crisis communications plans for those.
Questions and elements to consider and include in the plan are:
- People and their safety always come first. Emphasize this point throughout the plan. Each operation should have policies and procedures addressing safety that are adhered to; crisis communications begin only after ensuring everyone is safe.
- Identify a team of people who will be part of the communications team in a crisis. On some operations, this may be a small core group, but other farms have a person whose role includes social media or website maintenance, and these individuals need to be part of the team. Assign roles to each crisis communications team member.
- Who is responsible for communicating with which audiences? There should be a designated spokesperson(s). Often, this is a farm owner or manager; media training beforehand is recommended.
- What communication channels would best suit your operation? While in-person communication is always preferred, it’s not always possible. Contingency plans should be made for digital communications too, in the event of limited electricity or internet.
- Draft message templates for different scenarios and the audiences affected by them. These are templates and should be adapted for the situation before being used but save valuable time. Drafts should be completed for the mediums the team wants to use, including public statements, email messages, website text, social media, and press releases. Communication needs to continue until normal business operations resume; in some scenarios there will be multiple messages drafted for each medium.
- Develop an incident report form to document the crisis and response. These can be useful in evaluating and refining the crisis communication plan after the incident concludes. The incident report form should include who, what, where, when, why, and how. The ‘what’ section should include details about the weather and other circumstances. The farm’s insurance agent may have suggestions for what to include on the form.
While a crisis communication plan does not need to be fancy, it makes a huge difference to have the conversations ahead of time and document information.
Step 3: Review Legal Responsibilities
The agritourism business planning process includes reviewing legal responsibilities, however, revisiting these during the crisis communication planning process is beneficial. There are local, state, and federal laws like liability and safety, among others, that apply to agritourism. 
Legal counselors familiar with agriculture and tourism should review your crisis communications plan to ensure compliance (visit the National Agricultural Law Center for resources). Update plans accordingly and undergo periodic legal counsel review as the laws change.
Step 4: Address Insurance Considerations
Agritourism introduces new insurance considerations since the nature of farm visitor interactions and business premises is changing. Insurance providers can ensure the farm, owners, and employees have liability and coverage requirements for the various scenarios. Again, a professional with agricultural and tourism experience is beneficial. The crisis communications plan should align with any insurance policy requirements or guidelines, and many insurance providers will review and discuss crisis prevention strategies and risk management with their clients.
Step 5: Build and Strengthen Community Partnerships
Farms generally have strong relationships with their community partners, including emergency responders, local government staff and officials, and community organizations. Building and strengthening these relationships can provide valuable partners when implementing the crisis communications plan, as they can help share your messages and provide additional support.
Sharing information about the agritourism operation and the farm’s commitment to safety and quality helps build trust and understanding. Many farms actively participate in their community by serving on committees, as first responders, or helping in other ways, and this is a natural way to build and strengthen community partnerships.
Step 6: Practice the Plan and Revise as Needed
Crisis communications plans should be practiced and revised, ideally prior to the beginning of a new season of farm visits. Plans that live in a computer or on a shelf become helpful when they are put into place through practice scenarios, so that when and if a crisis occurs the details are fresh. The
team should be familiar with the plan and practice using a tabletop exercise, where the scenario and steps are discussed. This helps everyone become familiar and comfortable with their role and helps the team identify areas of improvement. A phone tree and chain-of-command flow chart is helpful to assign some duties and roles.
Media training for the spokesperson and other team members is beneficial for crisis communications, and for various other farm promotion opportunities that arise. Local Cooperative Extension Systems and state Farm Bureau Associations often have on-demand resources available for farmers and agritourism operations.
Crisis communications planning for agritourism can help farm owners, managers, and employees mitigate risk and respond effectively to emergencies.
Relevant Websites
- UConn Extension Agritourism Resources
- Penn State Agritourism Resource Hub
- UVM Agritourism Resources
- Rutgers Agritourism Training
- Global Agritourism Network
- National Agricultural Law Center