the old small animal building and put a two-storey building
there and a single storey. We’re going to do more people shelters,
school groups having their dinner and things like that’.
‘The farm is more or less steady at 200,000 and 220,000 visitors,
but then there are lots of under-threes and we’ve done a new
playground, which has been very, very popular. The café gets its
regulars. The toyshop is fairly new, but again, kids who go
round the farm, they always like to buy a little something. There
are train sets and lots of cameras, everything with our name on’.
For the farm families concerned primarily with running a profitable
farm-based tourism attraction, the need to show the farm as
a traditional working farmwas seen to be of secondary importance,
while for those concerned with still being farmers, this type of
experiential authenticity can be seen often as an impediment to the
ability to run a profitable business. There was a recognition among
these families that the ideal business model from the perspective of
operational efficiency and profitability was either to abandon
farming production altogether or ensure a rigid separation of
farming and tourismactivities. The latter divisionwas seen possibly
to result in creating only a sanitised veneer of farming within the
realms of the attraction for the purposes of tourism consumption.
As a result, this could constitute a type of staged experiential
authenticity (see Fig. 1) whereby scenes and activities are staged for
tourists, such as milking cows or feeding livestock, and the experience
is projected as a real reflection of genuine activities taking
place on a farm, albeit on a different scale or modified to facilitate
their viewing/interaction.
Such overt and explicit staging was orchestrated by ‘modifiers’
who restricted the overlap between the traditional working farm
and the farm attraction. At the extreme, particularly in cases where
purpose-built attractions are implemented as part of a growthoriented
business diversification strategy where the farm bends to
the wishes of the tourists, there is the possibility that the farm
disappears completely, or becomes entirely separate. This leaner
portfolio of activity could result in the projection of contrived
authenticity (see Fig. 1) which involves the staging of scenes by the
owners as ‘switchers’ whose dominant definition of themselves
was that of entrepreneurs/enterprise owners rather than farmers,
and where there is a distinct separation between the original
working farm and the farm attraction. An example of thiswas when
the researchers visited a farm attraction which had diversified to
such an extent that the remaining animals were used purely to
serve the interests of the tourists rather than being valued for
themselves. Foot and mouth disease (FMD) had also played a strong
role in influencing the design and layout of the proximity of tourists
relative to the animals, as well as the numbers of animals kept by
many attractions. Yet the farmers pointed out that FMD had only
speeded up a trend that was happening as a result of increased
costs from vets and health and safety and insurance. As an example,
at one farm a strict path had been devised to orient people around
the attraction and, to replace former farm buildings. Permanent
structures had been built, such as the one which housed a large allweather
cafeteria, retail shop and garden centre. One of the highlights
of the attraction, that was purported to be highly popular
with children, comprised a life-sized fibreglass replica cow possessing
replica rubber teats filled with baby milk to allow for
children to practice ‘milking’ the cow. This too was housed in
a small all-weather building, ideal for tourists.
5. Conclusion
This article explores the case of farm attractions and the views
of farming family members in terms of the choices and dilemmas
they face while attempting diversification through a tourism
entrepreneurial route. It also considers how this affects their attitudes
towards more traditional farming activities. The findings,
relating to the intersection of experiential authenticity with the
farm family identity, has been modelled and takes into account
how farmers view their transition to a diversified business and the
subsequent pressure to project a staged or even contrived product in
order to be financially successful.
Hall (2007: 1140) argues that “The issue of authenticity in
tourism . has a significant moral dimension, but replication is not
intrinsically immoral unless there is a deception”. Such an approach
takes a deontological perspective to establishing what is moral and
immoral. Hence, many of the ‘switchers’ saw their role as stewards
of the countryside and hence striving to achieve a higher goal than
farming, which had previously been the industry through which
the countryside was protected. This more utilitarian perspective
would suggest that even with a degree of deception of the tourist, it
may be possible to argue that this was not only for the greater good
but also, despite being contrived experiential authenticity, also for
the tourist’s enjoyment of the experience, and so not immoral.
Here, Taylor’s (2001) contribution is helpful in describing ‘sincerity’
in the way products are provided, reflecting the intention to
provide an experiential authentic experience, but at the same time
protect important ‘back-stage’ locations from intrusion. In this way,
the utilitarian approach to considering experiential authenticity
allows us to escape from a pejorative description of ‘inauthentic
experience’. Hence, while the model presented uses the words
‘deep’, ‘surface’, ‘staged’ and ‘contrived’, it does so without values
attached to those words, and supports the notion that farmers are
able to offer a product designed for tourists, which could become an
experientially authentic projection of the farm family’s new identity,
although still based on an identity of traditional family
farming. Steiner and Reisinger (2007: 311) remind us, “It is
important in talking about authenticity to remember that it is
always about free choices, not about maintaining traditions or
being true to some past concept of individual, social or cultural
identity”. Claiming this freedom to define our own identity is the
ultimate expression of experiential authenticity.
By using the self-categorizations (Turner, 1999), definitions of
their situations (Goffman, 1959) and frames of reference of farming
family members, the research has allowed for the development of
a more coherent picture of the nature of farm tourism to be refined
in order to deepen our understanding of this business segment
from the perspective of the farm family. What this shows is that
a more sophisticated understanding is required of farmers’ attitudes
to farm attractions and how this affects their perception of
family farming as a way of life, and farm-based tourism enterprise
diversification. As such, the complexity and ambiguity experienced
by some farm family members who feel the need to diversify
through such a tourism route due to economic pressures and the
recent difficulties befalling agriculture is evident. Some feel that
they have succumbed to pressures to take this diversification
strategy, but are ill at ease with the new venture (Lansing & De
Vries, 2006). This can lead in extreme cases to farm families
describing experiences verging on a state of anomie (Orru, 1983),
reflected by those who reported feelings of unhappiness, resentment
or even depression in relation to the diversification route
chosen. Perhaps this reflects a resistance strategy, an articulation
and visible expression of how the current economic and agricultural
system is eroding what some perceive in hindsight to be
a more ‘golden’ halcyon age in the fast. At the other extreme, in
contrast, some have embraced with enthusiasm an entrepreneurial
future for the family farm in the tourism attraction business.
Experiential authenticity has been defined as trueness to oneself
(Trilling, 1974). Modifiers as farming families who stage scenes for
tourists are not always enacting this truth for themselves as they