Farm Profitability and Agritourism in the EU - Does size matter?
Zsuzsanna Bacsi, Péter Szálteleki
Abstract
Agritourism is an activity which represents the non-traditional roles of the countryside: food production, environmental values, the beauty of landscapes, cultural heritage and traditional lifestyles, contributing to income diversification. Thus agritourism is expected to help improve farm performance in terms of incomes, profitability and efficiency. While extensive empirical research has been done about this issue in the USA, relatively few results are known for Europe. The present paper deals with the impacts of agritourism revenues on the farm profitability and farm performance in the 28 countries of the EU (including Britain), from 2004 to 2020, relying on the standard FADN database, applying descriptive statistics, correlations and panel regression. Our findings show, that farm size matters, and although the smallest and the largest farms benefit, it is the medium size farms that gain the most from agritourism. Farms with smaller land areas, and less farm capital tend to be involved more in agritourism than better equipped ones, while the subsidy policy of the EU also enhances agritourism revenues.