Head for the farm

IT’S funny how these things come back with a different label,’ muses Julian Matthews, the founding and managing director of Real Wild Estates. He’s talking about agritourism, the meeting of agriculture and tourism, a growing global trend based on an old idea. For much of the 20th century, farmers would regularly invite families onto their land to help harvest crops in return for free lodgings, he points out.

Today, although examples of agritourism can be found all over the world, it is most closely associated with Italy. It first started to achieve widespread fame in the Mediterranean country in the 1950s, as traditional and small-scale farming became increasingly less profitable. Farmers were forced to diversify, so they threw open the barn doors, welcoming outsiders, urban Italians and international tourists, who learned how to milk cows and prepare produce, such as