Voice From The Field: Dr. Doolarie (Dee) Singh-Knights

Dr. Doolarie Singh-Knights, Professor of Resource Economics and Management Extension Specialist

Introduction

What is your name and occupation?

My name is Dee Singh-Knight, and I am an extension professor at WVU in the Division of Land Grant Engagement. I have been in this position since 2010.

I am a university professor, teaching university students for half of my time, and the other half of the time I work with the Extension Service which connects the university to our other “students” who are the general public in West Virginia and beyond. So, a lot of my extension work is based on connecting the citizens of West Virginia to the resources available through the university.

I am a trained agricultural economist specializing in agricultural economics and management. It is a multidisciplinary field, especially when it comes to the management of businesses which involves everything from managing personnel, maintaining financial health amid changing economic outlook, and navigating rules and laws that impact businesses. We often joke that our role at the extension office is part technical expert and part switchboard operator. If I’m not the person with the expertise you need, I will connect you to somebody within the university system that will have the expertise to help you. That’s what the university extension service does in a nutshell.


Agritourism in Action

I know you’ve been working hard on expanding agritourism in West Virginia. What can you tell me about that?

Agritourism is growing globally as we’re seeing a lot of visitors seeking what we call experiential travel. Travelers today often want to experience what makes a place unique through activities like trying the local food to connect to the people and their culture and heritage. They want hands-on activities that will connect them to that place and of course, shopping for unique items that can only be found in that location. Agritourism can offer that connection.

This niche industry is growing by leaps and bounds in West Virginia. In fact, since the 2012 census we have been able to increase the number of agritourism operations in West Virginia by threefold.

Let me take a minute to explain what agritourism is. It is defined as bringing visitors to a working farm to experience it from an educational, recreational, and social perspective and, hopefully, providing enjoyment to those visitors. It’s a great way our farm operators and owners can increase revenue via admission fees or product sales, and agritourists reap the benefit of connecting to agriculture and understanding where their food comes from. So, it’s a win-win for owners and visitors alike. It is also a win for the state because these wonderful operations attract people to our state which boosts revenue. Agritourism is a perfect match for WV’s “wild and wonderful” image.

Anyone can break into agritourism if they have a business rooted in agriculture, so it could be your traditional crop or livestock farms that are welcoming people, or it could be a value-added farm using some of their products to make local jams and jellies to sell. It can include wineries, distilleries, and cideries using local products, or agricultural businesses offering on-farm events such as u-pick and farm-to-table dinners. You can be an artisan harvesting wool or alpaca fiber to make value-added clothing and accessories. Another example is using local wood like Maple and Birch to make wonderful wood products. Agritourism covers everything—not just the more obvious attractions like corn mazes and wineries.


What’s Next for WV Agritourism?

What do you think will be the next hot thing in agritourism? Are there any niche areas you think will blow up in coming years?

Globally, there is a demand for farm-to-table dining experiences, especially those with a sustainable approach. People want to see where these food products come from and how they are transformed into a meal, especially something unique like ramps or morel mushrooms. Then, they pair that meal with locally produced wine, beer, or cider in an informal dining event around a communal table. These farm-to-table events where the hosts engage in storytelling, connecting the farm and food to the history, culture and heritage are the ones exploding globally.


Storytelling & Culture in Agritourism

We’re also seeing this wonderful trend in storytelling which is a way to differentiate one place from another. How do you differentiate West Virginia from New York or Scotland or Italy? It is the unique stories around those places that help visitors connect to the farm families, food, history culture, and heritage, essentially giving visitors a “sense of place” of that unique location. For example, one of the keynote speakers at our agritourism conference talked about humble foods and how Appalachian cuisine developed. We got to sample something called vinegar pie which became part of our regional culinary heritage. Storytelling in tourism and agritourism is important because travelers have a lot of choices, and sometimes the story will determine that traveler’s choice.


Women Leading the Way

Do you have advice for women who want to break into the agritourism business?

Like any other business, you start with an idea and build a business model from there.

I want to talk about the women already working in the field. Women make up the majority of attendees in our classes, conferences, and events. In fact, in terms of active businesses in general, data from 2010-2022 agricultural censuses show the number of women-owned agribusinesses in West Virginia are triple the national average. We have a lot more women running their own businesses in general, and certainly agritourism is no exception.

But coming back to advice, it really is about understanding what the visitor is looking for and matching that with the assets you have. There are five main business risks we try to address to help our participants navigate them. First is production risk, like what do you produce and how you will manage that to complement consumer demand. Second is your financial risk and assessing if the business idea is financially feasible. Third is your marketing risk, which means you must find a way to connect with customers and determine how many customers you need to attract to make your business profitable. The fourth is your human resources risk, so you need to figure out where you’ll find people with the right skills to make this business successful as well as finding partners and stakeholders to complement your initiatives. Finally, there is legal and environmental risk. What sort of licenses do you need to operate? What sort of legalities and liabilities come along with having an agritourism operation? Our educational and networking programs are geared toward helping people better understand how those risks apply to their operations and how to develop effective strategies to manage them. I especially love the networking aspects of my initiatives because I am a firm believer that you can learn a lot from your peers’ successes, but you can learn a whole lot more from their failures.


Agritourism in WV: More Than You Might Expect

Is there anything about agritourism that would surprise people?

I think people new to agritourism will be surprised to learn it’s much more than farms, and much different than a “petting zoo.” It is a variety of wonderful agricultural and value-added operations offering unique educational and recreational experiences right in their backyards, and they’d be pleased to discover some of these activities offer a five-star experience the same way a restaurant or hotel might.

I encourage everyone to look at different websites—whether it is through the WVU Extension Service, the Department of Agriculture, or your local tourism sites. Find out about the wealth of our regional agritourism operations that are right in your backyard.


Upcoming Events & Creative Ideas

Are there any upcoming events or initiatives you want people to know about?

It’s important to me to promote these farm crawls which will have a lot of momentum on social media and various websites.

We also want to encourage anyone interested in the agritourism industry to access our training materials and educational opportunities. I want to connect them with whatever they need whether they are selling food products, fiber or wood products, or offering educational activities that fit well with agritourism.

West Virginians should get involved and explore all the opportunities in the area like foraging hikes to hunt for mushrooms or edible wildflowers, for example. There’s Gritt’s Farm in Buffalo, WV which recently had its second tulip festival. Also, White Pickett Farms in Parkersburg is a flower farm where you can do photo sessions or take classes where you’ll learn to make wreathes from their flowers, and they even offer a class where you can make sourdough bread as well as jams and jellies to pair with it. Operators like these have developed some truly creative ideas.

There is a bison farm in Terra Alta called Riffle Farms which is operated by Liz Riffle alongside her husband, and they do some wonderful farm-to-table dinners where they show you how they humanely field-harvest a bison and use the hide to produce things like rugs and other items. They prepare the carcass on a giant rotisserie where it cooks for hours before being served as the main part of the farm-to-table dinner later in the day. They also pair dinner with amazing local craft beverages, and of course, storytelling. If you don’t want to travel home after your meal, you can also camp in the pastures at Riffle farms, which is all part of the agritourism offerings.

There are operations using locally sourced natural fibers to make apparel ranging from one-off hats, mittens, and baby booties. That is still considered agritourism because it’s creating something from our agricultural resources and making them available for sale to visitors. Many people are unsure of their ability to make these products, or they do not have a place where they feel comfortable welcoming visitors. That’s okay. What you want to do instead is connect with people already operating businesses and ask if you can partner with them to sell your products to their visitors. You can also sell your products at events like farmers’ markets.

I was just talking to my class about businesses like JQ Dickinson Salt Works in Charleston which is operated by Nancy Bruns and her brother. They reopened their family’s 200 year old salt mine to produce artisanal salt, and now their tagline is “Artisan products made from salt produced from ancient seas.” Who would have thought there was an ancient sea in West Virginia buried under the Appalachia Mountains? See how that connects back to the Appalachian story? Their salt is the perfect pairing for wonderful West Virginia products like some locally grown potatoes or to marinate locally sourced meat. They connect with other agricultural businesses who use their salt, and now they have a wider product line they offer for sale. They also offer some amazing five-star farm dining experiences at JQ Dickinson.

Appalachian Botanicals is another business based in the southern part of the state. Their tagline is “Second chances for land, second chances for people.” They’re using reclaimed mine land that would otherwise be inappropriate for agricultural production, and they’re using it to grow lavender and employing previously incarcerated or unemployed individuals to give them a second chance. The lavender is harvested for use in wonderful products like oils, lotions, and soaps.

We have a wonderful group of maple farms or “sugar shacks” who open their farms to visitors annually during Mountain State Maple days in February and March to show visitors the maple syrup process. In my university classes I often ask students if they know where Maple syrup comes from. They usually know it comes from a maple tree, but they are surprised to learn the process entails using fifty gallons of sap which is reduced to one gallon of maple syrup. Visits like these demystify the process and make consumers realize why there might be a $30.00 price point for a gallon of maple syrup. It requires a lot of labor to make maple syrup, and we want to share that process. Kids enjoy learning about the science of how gravity and osmosis is involved in harvesting the sap, so there is a lot to be gained from visiting an operation like this.

So, there are many sides to agritourism. My mantra is “when you’ve seen one agritourism operation, you’ve seen ONE agritourism operation because they all offer a one-of-a-kind experience.”


Kids & Education on the Farm

Speaking of kids, what are some fun and educational agritourism activities they can enjoy in the state?

I’m happy to say we have a great number of West Virginia businesses offering wonderful experiences for children, and many local agritourism operations offer what we call farm-based education along with group deals for K-12 students.

A poultry farm tour is a great way to learn about the life cycle of an embryo to chicken back to an egg, or students can visit a farm growing pumpkins to learn how they grow from seed to plant to pumpkin.

Circling back to maple farms, they offer great opportunities to teach math. Farmers will talk about how many gallons of sap are needed to produce one gallon of syrup, so it gets kids thinking about how math and science apply to both agriculture and business.

A lot of places host planting workshops which encourage guests to grow their own food and hopefully purchase seedlings while they’re visiting. You can learn to create container gardens or inground gardens, and kids really seem to enjoy working with the plants. So many West Virginia businesses are creating amazing educational experiences for our kids and kids-at-heart, and it’s wonderful to see.


Getting Involved

If someone wanted to reach out for more information, who should they contact?

Here at West Virginia University Extension, we can offer training and resources to meet you where you are at. We understand people will have different needs and maybe starting from different points, so we can work with you on an individual basis to help you figure out your next steps and help you create a path forward. Please reach out to me at dosingh-knights@mail.wvu.edu or 304-293-7606 to get the conversation started.


Interview conducted, transcribed, and written by Marlynda Arnett, Program Innovation Leader for West Virginia Women Work.

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