Strengthening agriculture-tourism linkages in the developing World: Opportunities, barriers and current initiatives

Abstract

Building linkages between agriculture and tourism is critical for maximising tourism’s economic impacts in developing countries. The objective in this article is to provide a critical review of existing scholarship relating to linkages between tourism and agriculture as a whole, to explanations concerning the barriers to strengthened linkages, and of initiatives for encouraging closer agriculture-tourism linkages in the developing world. It is argued that key policy issues for strengthened linkages relate to a set of supply, demand and marketing related issues, which are core barriers to linking tourism establishments and agricultural food producers.   Key words:  Linkages, tourism, agriculture, developing world, sustainable tourism.