The availability and adoption of high-speed broadband appears to boost the number of farms offering agritourism activities, according to a new study led by Penn State researchers. Their findings, the researchers said, bolster the argument for expanding broadband availability in support of farm operators who want to benefit from the growing consumer interest in on-farm experiences.

“Agritourism operations are consumer-facing businesses that offer activities to farm or ranch visitors, such as farm stands, pumpkin patches, corn mazes, hayrides and farm stays. They need to attract visitors, and most of their visitors find them online,” said Claudia Schmidt, assistant professor of marketing and local/regional food systems in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences, who led the research. “Ours is the first study to examine the relationship between high-speed internet and agritourism specifically, and demonstrates a clear relationship.”

In the study, published in the Journal of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, the researchers used several data sources — including the 2017 Census of Agriculture and the Federal Communication Commission’s fixed broadband deployment data — to conduct a nationwide, county-level statistical analysis of the relationship between a county’s average adopted broadband speed in 2012 and the number of agritourism businesses in that county five years later, while controlling for other relevant factors. They included the five-year lag due to data limitations, according to co-author Luyi Han, a postdoctoral researcher at the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development (NERCRD) based at Penn State.

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