ATDC’s – BARAMATI AGRI & RURAL TOURISM TRAINING,

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTER

www.agritourism.in

ATDC has developed home grown agriculture tourism

model to serve the needs of the farmers particularly low
income farm households, ATDC is moving beyond
traditional approaches to Tourism by introducing
Agriculture Tourism to villagers
The strategy:
1. The first principal in ATDC’s approach is to give training preferably to those farmers who have
small and holdings
2. The second principal is to build the Agri tourism center with on-site local available resources with
the help of local artisans and local people
3. The third principal is to create an awareness and infrastructure of field staff to guide the farmer
and help them to market, run and operate Agri tourism center.

The aims of the ATDC (Agri tourism India) project are

1. To Develop and promote agriculture tourism (Agri tourism) as the potential vehicle to diversifying
and stabilizing rural economies.
2. Creating sustainable jobs, increasing community income, providing a broader market base for
local business
3. Attracting tourists to the rural areas, thereby supporting the growth of small tourism industries
4. Through ATDC’ project, training and support, farmers benefit from development of Agri tourism
5. Tourism income to improve their livelihoods, traditional forms of arts and music in rural areas
are encouraged and supported
6. Urban Indians as well as foreign tourists have the opportunity to discover and appreciate Indian
agricultural tradition
7. Development of opportunities for on-site employment for the farm family members so they do
not have to migrate to urban areas.
8. Enhancement of understanding of the value of agriculture and thus of the importance of
maintaining agriculture lands

Poor agriculture commodity prices coupled with rising input costs are slowly but substantially
eroding small farm incomes in India, Further forces such as globalization, industrialization, and
development encroachment are threatening the agriculture. As a result, farmers are acquiring
second job or leaving their farms altogether in order to sustain their household income. Many
farmers are recognizing the need and desire to diversify their farm products and supplement their
agriculture income.

With an agriculture economy that has decreased to just 2% or remained stagnant for last 15 years,
farmers across India have tremendous opportunity to diversify their list of products and service
offerings with agriculture tourism.

Agri Tourism increases the potential for higher margins on farm sales of value added products and
services.

Agri-tourism attracts urban tourists to rural villages for a form of relaxation that follows the growing
trend of tourism that is both educational and recreational. It is another option for farmers wanting
to diversify their farming operations that will help bring more economic activity to rural area of
India
Travel and Tourism are big Business across India, In India alone there are 740 million domestic
leisure tourists spend more money every year and support millions of jobs, the purpose of the
model report is to provide farmers with basic information on how to use tourism as an additional
product offering on the farm.
Many farmers in Maharashtra are facing the challenge of finding adequate income-generating
activities because traditional agricultural-based rural economies do not offer sufficient employment
opportunities.

Young people, in particular, leave areas due to a lack of opportunities. In this context, particularly
tourism industry represents an appropriate agent for rural development as it may drive the
following effects:

• Create lasting jobs rapidly throughout different economic sectors, with a significant direct impact
on agriculture, and other local activities;
• Offer good opportunities to livelihood diversification for young people and women and help
alleviate rural poverty;
• Provide a springboard for the unemployed to enter the labor market due to training and career
development opportunities;
• Establish small and medium enterprises based in the local community;
• Stimulate local produce (e.g., food, crafts), community pride, as well as heritage and nature
conservation;
• Help to sustain local services and community facilities and thus to enhance the quality of life
ATDC’s system includes "Training and capacity building service to farmers make it easy for rural
villagers to start and operate the Agri tourism centre in their village. In addition to helping people
replicate his idea, ATDC has setup his Baramati Agri & Rural Tourism Training & Research and
Development Centre at Village Palshi TLQ Baramati, Dist Pune in Maharashtra.

The Agri Tourism Training Project developed by ATDC in the Palshi village, demonstrated that with
the right approach, farmers from all income levels can become part of agriculture tourism concept
and benefits from it to make agriculture more viable, our idea is to provide safe and convenient
tourism project options and agriculture supportive opportunities for poor and low income farmers
and households and businesses in rural areas, rather than depending on traditional approaches of
high capital oriented supplementary agriculture businesses like dairy etc, farmers from rural areas
can generate additional income and employment from agriculture based tourism.

Following a phase of research and an initial pilot programme in the village of Baramati in 2005,
ATDC now has 500 trained farmers and 300 Agri-tourism locations across the state of Maharashtra.
Since the inception of the programme, farmers across the state have experienced a 25% growth
in their income. In last 2 years ATDC have added another 50 farmers to Agri Tourism Initiative
which has helped to sustain agriculture and farming. ATDC's concept is pioneering in the way it is
addressing the conservation of local cultural heritage. Local Artists have left their traditional art
and migrated to urban area in search of the livelihood, but when ATDC invited them to perform at
centers , as well as to work in the farm , they started earning for livelihood and when they got
convinced that they are survive , they got back to village and now they happy that they are taking
the tradition to future generation in the family.