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While increasing agricultural literacy (AL) has been the focus of numerous educational programs, few AL scales have been developed specifically for children. AL programming struggles to rigorously evaluate their programs, particularly when little time is available for assessments in informal contexts. The lack of evaluation tools that allow to accurately measure educational impacts compromises progress on AL. In this paper, we present the development and validation of the Agricultural Literacy Instrument for Local Foods (ALI-LF) for children between the ages of 9 and 13. The instrument measures three domains of agricultural literacy (knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors). We pilot tested the instrument with children between 9 and 13 years old at a local arboretum and further validated the instrument at six agritourism farms. To analyze the data, we used principal component factor, Cronbach's alpha, and descriptive statistics. The results support a comprehensive reliable instrument validated for informal contexts, such as farms offering recreational or educational activities to visitors (i.e., agritourism). This instrument fills the existing gap of adequate tools to evaluate AL programming which can support moving forward AL advances among children.

Agricultural and environmental literacy are essential public goods, but associated education efforts struggle to reach broad audiences. Understanding learner backgrounds and lived experiences can help address this challenge. We assessed the relative importance of demographics, parent views of agriculture, interactions with farmers and parents, and learning setting in predicting agricultural literacy among 525 elementary school children in North Carolina, USA. We used classification and regression trees and random forest models, which account for non-linear and interacting relationships. Knowing a farmer and engagement with parents were more predictive of children agricultural literacy than demographics, countering historically held deficit-based assumptions around agricultural and environmental literacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agritourism—visiting a working farm for education or recreation—may serve as a tool to increase local food consumption as it often includes opportunities to purchase local food on-site. Yet, the influence of agritourism on consumers' local food purchasing behavior remains underexplored. Thus, this study measures the impact of agritourism experiences on consumers' intentions to purchase local food. To do so, visitors were surveyed at six agritourism farms with similar agritourism activities (e.g., U-pick, educational displays, and on-site market) located across North Carolina (USA) before (pre) and after (post) their visits (n = 328). Data, collected during the 2018–2019 peak agritourism season, were analyzed using repeated measures multivariate analysis of variance. Findings indicate that agritourism experiences effectively increase consumers' intentions to purchase local food. These findings advance the scholarship of agritourism. They also provide useful information to design effective marketing campaigns to promote the purchase and consumption of local food and strengthen local agricultural systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the growing popularity of local food, there is still no unified definition used across the board. The lack of unified definition of local food can prevent effective marketing, policymaking, and research efforts. Given the inconsistencies on local food definitions, we sought to fill this gap by surveying consumers' understanding of local food in North Carolina (NC, USA) departing from three categories of definitions found in the literature; local food defined in terms of: (1) market outlet (e.g., food bought directly from the farmer); (2) locality or political boundaries (e.g., food produced within the country); and (3) distance (e.g., food produced within 100 miles of commercialization). Informed by our study results, we propose defining local food in terms of the specific locality where is produced (e.g., county or state) as opposed to defining local food in terms of distance or market outlet. While the meaning of local food will remain contested among activists, governmental entities, and researchers, this study confirms that a shared meaning among consumers is emerging that should be incorporated across policy making, marketing, and research efforts. • Assessment to contribute towards achieving a unified definition of local food. • Compares three categories of definitions of local food among consumers. • Incorporates sociodemographic and psychographic characteristics in the assessment. • Definitions based on locality or political boundaries are the most popular amongst consumers. • A unified local food definition can advance marketing, research, and policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wine trails have been studied insufficiently within the tourism literature despite of their recent rapid development worldwide. In response, this study examines residents' perceptions of wine tourism development in terms of personal benefits and community impacts. It also explores whether residents' socio-demographics and levels of wine enthusiasm, and wine trails' tourism characterization influence residents' perceptions. Following a stratified random sampling procedure, residents living along two wine trails in the Piedmont region of North Carolina (U.S.) were surveyed. Results indicate that residents are neutral in their perceptions of the Piedmont wineries in terms of both personal benefits and community impacts. Residents' socio-demographics and level of wine enthusiasm, as well as the comprehensiveness of wine trails' tourism amenities were significantly associated with residents' perceptions. Results also indicate that personal benefits mediate residents' perceptions of community impacts. In addition to the oretical and methodological contributions, this paper outlines management implications for wine trails. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Agritourism is not a recent phenomenon; furthermore, it has considerably increased in the past ten years and is projected to continue growing in the future. Despite such growth, there is not a shared understanding of agritourism which is problematic as this creates confusion and lessens its appeal among consumers, further hindering communication and collaboration among stakeholders. Therefore, a study was conducted in 2011 to identify preferred definitional elements and types of agritourism activities across residents, farmers, and extension faculty in Missouri and North Carolina (U.S.). Results showed that “agricultural setting”, “entertainment”, “farm”, and “education” should be included in a good definition of agritourism. Respondents also agreed that agritourism includes staged or authentic activities carried out on working agricultural facilities. All stakeholder groups rejected to consider activities offered in non-working farms or where the agricultural setting only serves for background purposes as agritourism. Statistical tests showed significant differences on agritourism definitional elements and types across groups, results that are further discussed. Besides advancing the understanding of the meaning of agritourism, this study carries important implications for the practice of agritourism. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]