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As farm-to-table offerings have grown in popularity, those outside the ag community have taken notice.

In 2021, Discover Clermont County, a convention and visitors bureau in southwest Ohio, reached out to the agriculture community to ask farmers to be a more public part of the overall experience.

The idea, said Sarah Gleason, marketing and communications manager with Discover Clermont County, was for visitors to have the opportunity to see where the food they loved was sourced.

The pitch?

“I want people to visit your farms, and we have the technology to promote and support this event,” said Gleason.

Now in its fifth year, the Clermont County Food and Farm Tour has become a popular event in the area.

“From a metrics standpoint, the farm tour page on our website is in the top 10% every year,” Gleason said, noting that 5,935 unique visitors downloaded the farm tour guide from the Discover Clermont County website.

Creative partnerships between farmers and the surrounding community are vital to building relationships, and in some cases Ohio Farm Bureau memberships.

When Sarah Ison and her husband, Josh, open their farm to visitors during the Clermont County Food and Farm Tour, they make some extra sales, but that’s not the only reason they participate. They want to give people a chance to see the management practices they use and answer questions about agriculture.

“For us, that’s one of our favorite things, to have those conversations with people,” Sarah Ison said.

Farm tours are not new, and they have a sustained popularity that has become one of the most interactive ways to bridge the divide between farmers and consumers.

Scott Myers, who farms with his wife, Nicole, in Wayne County, has a similar perspective. Their farm was a stop on last year’s Wayne County Farm Tour.

“There were a lot of people from the city who had not been on farms before,” he said.

“That’s one of the reasons we feel it is so important to do this. You want to make sure the non-farming public gets a chance to be on a farm and know where their food comes from.”

Long-standing history

In Wayne County, the tour is a long-standing tradition, explained Lindsay Tournoux, organization director for Ashland, Medina, Summit and Wayne counties. It was originally started in the mid-1960s by a local camera club and was carried forward through the 1970s by a group of leaders in the ag community.

The Wayne County Farm Bureau started organizing the event in 1980 and has rotated the location of the tour through different quadrants of the county every year since, she said.
New visitors show up on the tour every year, but some families make the tour an annual outing.

“There are definitely people who follow it because they’ve been going for three generations,” Tournoux said.

Finding farmers to host tour stops each year can be a challenge, but Wayne County Farm Bureau leaders are determined to keep the tour going, Tournoux said. They’ve partnered with the Wayne County Convention and Visitors Bureau, which provides publicity for the tour.

Last year the drive-it-yourself tour was held in October and included stops to several farms
as well as The Ohio State University College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences (CFAES) Wooster, an equipment dealership and historical societies.

This was the fourth time the Myers family hosted a stop on the tour, with their first turn hosting back in the 1980s. “We kind of knew what to expect but it has been interesting to see different people over the years come through,” Scott said.

The Myers family farm, Woodlyn Acres, has evolved over the years as well. Ten years ago, the family transitioned from conventional production to certified organic production and they currently raise corn, soybeans, wheat, hay, sunflowers, oats, barley, rye and peas. Nicole also has a herd of 50 Nigerian Dwarf dairy goats and she makes soap with their milk.

Last year, Scott estimates they had about 2,000 visitors over the two days. Some were neighbors, but most came from nearby cities. They’ve made some lasting connections with visitors over the years, he added.

The Isons, who have hosted a tour stop on the Clermont County tour for the last five years, have also seen a variety of tour guests. On their farm, Flourish and Roam, they raise pastured beef, pork, chicken and lamb, and also run a herd share program that offers raw A2/A2 milk.

Some visitors come from urban areas in nearby Hamilton and Warren counties, Gleason noted, adding that a Friday night cocktail hour on a farm and a Sunday brunch made with products from tour participants were added in 2025 to help turn the tour into a weekend-long affair.

Attracting members

The Clermont County tour has turned out to be a way of attracting Farm Bureau members, Sarah Ison added. Some of the aspiring homesteaders join after they learn about the resources Farm Bureau offers. Farms are required to be members in order to be selected as tour stops, so the tour has brought in some new farmer members as well. Last year the drive-it-yourself tour was held in September and involved 19 farms and food producers.

Another lasting benefit of the tour is strengthened ties within the ag community. Renee Koerner of Big Fish Farms said she didn’t know many other farmers in the area before she became involved with the Clermont County Farm Bureau and the tour. “It has really brought us as a farming community together.”

Big Fish Farms raises sustainable American paddlefish to produce caviar and fish. The tour has helped Koerner introduce caviar to people who have never tasted it before.

The county has a wide variety of small, niche farms and the tour is helping establish the area as a source for specialty products, Koerner said. “We wanted to expose as many people as possible to all the different, interesting agricultural things going on in our county.”

KEY POINTS

• Inviting the public to a farm helps bridge the gap between farmers and consumers, fostering understanding of agriculture.
• Farm tours show the public about where food comes from, promote local agriculture diversity and create networking opportunities among farmers.
• Partnerships between producers and local communities build relationships and can increase Farm Bureau memberships.

WHAT’S NEXT
Have an idea for a farm-community partnership? Contact your local county Farm Bureau and share your idea.

Kelli Milligan Stammen assisted with the creation of this story.