The President of the Lacombe Regional Tourism and Marketing Association is back from a trip to California, equipped with some new ideas and energy to share with the local agri-tourism industry.

Rachel Kraay is also one of the owners of Kraay Family Farm, home of the Lacombe Corn Maze just west of Lacombe.

She was awarded some provincial grant dollars to travel to Los Angeles this month for the North American Farm Direct Marketing Association annual convention, farmer's inspired.

Kraay took in 3 days of bus tours to different agri-tourism attractions in Los Angeles County, which she says provided a real in-depth experience.

“What’s neat about these tours is that these farmers invite us into the real inner workings of the farms, so you don’t just get the front tour, you get this is how much money we make, and these are our policy and procedure manuals and this is how we get people in and out, and this is how we get it to market, this is how we market it, you know these are all the farmer’s markets we go to, this is how they are set up”.

The agritainment farm operator says there's plenty of room to create more opportunities for people to experience agriculture, as a movement to understand where your food comes from continues.

“You can do the Disney Land and you can do the crazy very unreal things, but a lot of people really just want to know how things work and what the real farm is like and just getting back to your roots a bit.  Figuring out and spending the day on a farm or how do they make this, or can we eat the food that we saw being produced, and I really see that those partnerships are quite evident”.

Kraay says we're seeing those partnerships happening here in central Alberta with farms teaming up with restaurants, breweries, wineries, in California it was orchards, to help create that farm to plate experience.