Experiencing organic farms and food by regional tourism innovation

Abstract

The paper discusses strategies and findings from an explorative R&D project: a transition theory-inspired research and development effort to green the tourism trade by niche formation. The paper analyses part of this transition effort in mobilizing organic farmers to become involved as niche agents, where we focus on experience-economic design for gaining economic benefits and cultural learning. The paper builds on 4 years of R&D efforts striving for experience-oriented innovations in the tourism trade by strategic formation of an environmental tourism niche on a regional arena in Denmark. This is done along the tourism chain from tour operators abroad, incoming bureaus, national and regional tourism organizations to local eco-destinations, such as organic farmers. From our R&D project and experience economy literature, we identify the key elements in an instructive organic experience. To do this, we reflect upon designing or staging eco-experiences in a way that may enhance learning, and we identify other positive outcomes that can motivate others to go in the same direction. Finally, we reflect on the results and challenges in forming the niche strategy within tourism, and for the organic farmers to improve the experience economy and carry out the green experience concepts.

Keywords:

• organic farms
• design
• experiences
• transition
• environmental tourism

Introduction

This is a paper that follows our analytical–strategic reflections on the research question: What are the challenges and possibilities to involve organic farmers in the niche formation of environmental tourism in the tourism industry? Organic farmers are part of a broad transition process within the green economy that has succeeded in becoming an important sector in Denmark. However, many of them and especially the smaller production scale farmers suffer from economic pressure and low prices. Accordingly they may have an interest in gaining surplus income from tourism and visits, and politically participate in exposing the sustainability and cultural assets of organic farming and food to their customers, and the population in general. Their interest is what we – researchers, tourist guides and consultants – have taken advantage of, in our initiative to form an environmental tourism niche in Denmark by connecting network partners from the whole tourism chain. The methodological approaches have included: governance for co-operative efforts among the business trade partners, systematic desk-top mapping of the approximately 500 organic farms in the region of Zealand, visiting 92 organic farms in Denmark and 12 organic farms in Sweden, Germany and the US, reconstructing hard facts and storylines of environmental innovations related to be most promising of the 50 destination, exploring and innovating in experience design with organic farms, forming tour packets, and designing communicative strategies and marketing.1 In the paper, we present the options and challenges for involving organic farmers into the experience economy by focusing on the design and practice of organic eco-experiences.

After presenting former greening of tourism strategies, the paper presents the perspective of this niche-forming strategy embedded within transition theory. The paper introduces elements and concepts from experience economy, as this is central to our niche-forming approach for the organic farmers to become part of the tourism trade. From our R&D project and experience economy, we identify the key elements in a good organic experience. To do this, we reflect upon designing or staging eco-experiences in a way that may enhance learning, and we identify other positive outcomes that can motivate others to go in the same direction. Finally, we reflect on the results and challenges in forming the niche strategy within tourism, and for the organic farmers to improve the experience economy and carry out the green experience concepts.

Greening tourism and destinations

In general terms, the combined practices of environmental concerns and tourism have followed the general discourses of environmental protection (see e.g. Dryzek 1997). The environment is viewed as either a tourist attraction understood as wild, untouched nature, apart from growing urbanization and civilization or as a polluted piece of nature. Thus, the tourism trade is to be controlled by technical standards, precaution and quotas, and tourism is to be perceived both as victim and executioner. This can be illustrated by the diversity of environmental tourism claims:

1.	Nature tourism: “… travelling to relatively undisturbed or uncontaminated natural areas with the specific objective of studying, admiring, enjoying the scenery and wild plants, animals and any exiting cultural manifestation …”. (Orams 2001)
2.	Ecotourism is “… responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local People”. (Ecotourism 2010)
3.	Sustainable tourism: “… responsible travel that strives to be low-impact and (often) small-scale (…) educate the traveller; provide funds for conservation; directly benefit the economic development and political empowerment of local communities …”. (Honey 2008)

It is striking that in greening the tourism trade it has been the aim to either preserve nature and cultures in pristine destinations or diminish the environmental burden from tourism. As these efforts have shown very few results in the Danish tourism market, we have tried to reverse the strategy by developing a new market for environmental learning tourism, thus expanding the “educate the traveller” concept from “Sustainable tourism”: The traveler should experience destinations within areas of more sustainable utilization of nature, space, and resources in an urbanized landscape. Here, we pay attention to the cultural aspects of eco-attractions in modern, everyday life, be it in local food and farming production, culinary eco-profiles and cultures.2 This is what we refer to as environmental tourism in the article. The environmental tourism project in Region Zealand that we discuss in this study is built on top of several projects within the field of environmental tourism development from the late 1990s to the present time. This development began with a number of first generation greening projects – the so-called “nature tourism” projects on handling litter, controlling numbers of tourists in protected areas and so on. Here, projects like The Environmentally Friendly Tourism Enterprises focused on diminishing the green shadow or burden of tourists in overnight accommodation and transportation in order to encourage environmental management.

The first type of the “sustainable tourism” project in the region and in Denmark, Destination 21 (1997–2001), was an attempt to look at local, geographic destinations as a frame for sustainable tourism development. The Destination 21 process was launched for the tourism industry to consider what sustainable tourism development3 might promise for the trade, by stimulating a common greening effort in the area among hotels, leisure facilities, etc. This was a turning point as the local destination from then on was perceived as the overall frame for working with sustainable developments in tourism. Accordingly, a number of projects in the local setting have flourished during the last decade, including new tourism subjects such as providing access to local produces. These kinds of projects were not only conducted for the tourists, but also served as branding for the local community, in order to rediscover the locality and attract new inhabitants.

In 2008–2011, a national project called All Year Tourism drew attention to thematic ecotourism in periods beyond the normal tourist season (VisitNordjylland 2008). This reflects a general search process within the tourism trade which encompasses strategies to fulfill new types of leisure cultures and tourist experiences among newly identified tourist segments – typically groups of families with former backpacker tourism ideals among parents and elderly middle class couples with an interest in culture, food, and wellness. Within these segments, tourism developer organizations identified “sustainable tourism” as having potential (EcoRegion 2010).

Accordingly, in these recent green branding and sustainable tourism strategy efforts, the destination as location of a clustered number of sites, professions and activities, has evolved meaningfully in a new sense. The eco-focused destination has drawn new attention to local producers as local food providers, whose identity was normally swallowed up by the food markets. Denmark′s modernisation and urbanization in a geographically small-scale nation had to some degree withered away localism or regional identity. Various locality values are at stake in the new eco-destination focus: a sense of place and community, specific cultures, transparency, availability, short product chains, and social innovation. It is within this framework that local food and farming products become important. A growing interest in Danish culinary tourism along with the New Nordic Food trend will become an opener for guiding into the practical production and farming conditions behind some of the principles in the New Nordic Food Manifesto (Nordisk Ministerråd 2013).

On top of this development, we saw an option for a new approach in transition for a more sustainable tourism trade: to leave the tradition of “cleaning” – diminishing the eco-burden from tourism – in order to create an environmental tourism niche development strategy together with the tourism market actors. This is a question of getting more business involvement in market options, by joining in for the co-creation of destination experiences in the eco-field, such as organic foods from accessible farmers and small, local food producers. Local food and farmers and eventually local shops and restaurants in the organic trade, play the role of being accessible places and spaces, but as we shall see, also become important niche formation agents with options for income gain. For visitors, it is an option to get personal contacts embodying practical knowledge of organic values and principles. This may become part of learning experiences of a more sustainable food production.

Transition by niche formation – a theory-informed strategy for innovations in the tourism trade in Denmark

Evolution and transition theories perceive the efforts of designing new systems of products and services, in this case eco-experiences and environmental tourism, as social processes of niche creation embedded in socio-technological regimes. Niche creation can be seen as experimentation by design, which takes place in already integrated structures of products, practices, cultures and services sought to have a high degree of path dependency. Innovation and sustainable transition studies (Elzen et al. 2004; Kemp and Loorbach 2007) engage in design practices going beyond existing knowledge systems embedded in fixed systems of practice. The development of alternative products, services or systems is supposed to take place in alternative design spaces or transition arenas, and design is highly related to the configuration of such spaces (Holm et al. 2011).

Transition-oriented management and policy research have suggested a ‘multi-level model’ to understand transition processes of regimes. Technological regimes are understood to operate and develop within relatively stable socio-technical landscapes (national and global conditions) and in a dynamic interplay with niches of alternative services and technologies where new openings and possibilities are created (Kemp et al. 1998; Geels 2002; Smith 2003; Kemp and Loorbach 2007). The creation of socio-service-technological, radical shifts in this perspective often depends on a very broad network of practitioners who undertake experimentation, promote niche efforts and make deliberative politics to enhance newly designed products, systems, and networks of practitioners.

The study presented in this article builds upon efforts in investigating and forming such a configuration process and how it is related to the transition of technological regimes (conservative standards, codes of business). We focus here on a certain part of our niche formation process among the organic food producers and farmers being part of the niche formation effort of the R&D project.

We have staged the design process of ecotourism in space and time among various fields of practices and knowledge systems. We have taken on the role of becoming new actors and forming new discourses so that in brochures, policy papers, newspapers, tourism magazines, and web pages knowledge is spread across the whole business chain. We have managed and guided a number of study tours on top of our research based mapping of well-suited eco-sites for visiting, and we have qualified tourist guides in the eco-tourism area. Thus, the niche design process is shaped as a complex interplay of different actors, involving communities of tourist businesses, tourist organizations, destination stakeholders, marketing networks, and tourism guiding training. The practices of these co-designers are embedded in the incumbent technological regimes, constituted by a multi-actor network, which provides the stability and selectivity of the regime (Geels 2002).

After all the efforts and measures of niche formation over three years, with a number of successful publications and events, a robust niche market was still not established, other than a few tour operators and event companies that have taken eco-tours into their portfolio. The project lacked local enthusiasm among local tourism organizations and bureaus and destination holders such as farmers. Most farmers were somewhat reluctant toward the project, as they missed a clear image of the benefits and how to work strategically with the experience economy. To make the niche, we were dependent upon niche agents to take ownership in the transition, and here we found a few pioneering organic farmers who were already involved in the tourist trade and who were eager to become involved in environmental tourism. We realized that we would have to work more thoroughly with concepts and types of experiences in the organic sector, in order to motivate farmers to be involved in the experience economy and to learn about obstacles that had to be overcome. Through study trips and data gathering we searched for pioneers in the organic sector in Denmark, US, Germany and Sweden, that provided us with new knowledge. From here, we began to merge theories of experience economy with collected practical knowledge from the pioneers. The design process of an emerging environmental tourism niche – when it comes to local, organic food and farms – includes a concurrent development of guiding principles, conceptual and practical considerations of designing experiences, business re-profiling, iconographies on the tourism products, alternative configurations of actors and elements around producers, shops, and restaurants. Here, we turn our focus to experience economy and unfold our general findings in concepts that might be used in handling organic experiences, in challenges, farmer's motivations, and benefits for the economy.

Types of organic experiences

We have visited 97 organic farms in Sweden, Denmark, Germany and the USA and conducted semi-structured interviews with farmers in order to identify history and specifics about the place, and we have registered observations of the farm sites according to several experience-related items. As a result of the visits and various development workshops with farmers, we have identified different types of experience designs that can be put into the experience compass. In this paper, we will primarily focus on the events, which the organic farmers have or may create themselves related to their primary production activity. Thus, we do not intend to follow a complete new business development of entertainment, like amusement parks, as that has nothing to do with our concern for providing instructive experiences to the visitor and instead focus on the experiences related to farming, the raw products and culinary produce. We will also present the farmers motivations and challenges.

We have identified different experiences, and what they all have in common is that all of the events include knowledge exchange about organic farming and tastings, and are arranged on the organic farms. It can be guided tours which include the farmer taking a group around her/his site and telling visitors about their personal background including the farm's history, various inventions, regulations and the values behind organic farming. We have witnessed organic tastings of wines, but more often farms are also starting to have tastings of juices, creams, cheeses, vegetables, etc. Dinners at farms are also a concept, which is used in all of the countries in different ways. Some bigger farms have cafés or restaurants; other smaller farms arrange special events with dinners made from the farms products, while others cooperate with hotels that use the farm's products. Whereas some farms have bed and breakfast facilities or summer apartments, others invite guests to participate in the production, arrange team building, and finally some arrange self-guided tours or treasure hunts for children. Each activity is created differently, and we have examined all of them to identify the most important aspects of a successful organic experience. These are discussed in the following section.

What's in organic experiences?

Pine and Gilmore argue that an experience is a way of marketing your product and combining it with a theme or company story so that you gain economical profit (Pine & Gilmore 1999). An experience typically consists of education, entertainment, esthetics, and escapism. Other theories include conditions such as: involvement, meaning, meetings with the owner, high and low challenges and stress levels and the surroundings (Mossberg 2003; Jantzen & Jensen 2006; Johansen & Jørstad 2006; Blichfeldt et al. 2007; Jantzen & Venter 2007). In the following, we will discuss these different aspects and find what is really important in the organic experience.

The farm surroundings

When staging experience, the framework of experiencing plays a major role because it affects the associations, narratives, etc. (Mossberg 2007). The surroundings “tell a story” whether they are designed to do so or not. Included in an experience are all of the places that the guest visits – from the entrance, the production area if this is shown in a guided tour, to the toilets, etc. All of these settings are somehow conditions that co-create the story about the place. If the visit is to a farm, which may be staged to symbolize something or tell a specific story, it is important that the scenery also symbolizes this. Otherwise the story will not be trustworthy and the experience will be problematic (Mossberg 2007).

Many farms have natural, good settings to create experiences in. When growing crops, the guests can see the fields, organic rules prescribe outdoor breeding, and hygiene restrictions in animal farms are less in the organic production, so guests can see or even touch the animals in the stable. Some farms have industry buildings where others have a more “typically idyllic” atmosphere surrounding it. The visitors take these different kinds of settings into account.

What can be problematic for ecotourism is the fact that the backstage may be filled with chemicals or extensive gas consuming cars that are not appropriate for an organic farm or experience. However, the praxis culture of eco-attractions is also supposed to be a culture of authenticism, with a laid-back attitude or trustworthiness to it. So when does the staging of the experience jeopardize the authenticity?

Meeting the farmers

Lena Mossberg (2003) argues that combined with the importance of the settings is the aspect of the other guests as well as the hosts and guides, which are important for the experience. In the organic experience, we find that the meeting with the farmers is particularly crucial. The farmers may talk about and involve their guests in their lifestyle, values and production and create new understandings of life on a farm and organic products. The farmers themselves explain that a lot of customers mention that it is interesting to meet the farmers, and from observation it seems that they are right. The visitors ask questions and when they tell of the experience afterward, the farmers often play a key role in the story. It also seems that the lifestyle and the values the farmers stand for are important for the guests. Today we often do not see the people who produce our food (Jacobsen 2008), but with the organic experience people get the chance to meet not only the people who prepare the food, but also the ones who produce it. Maybe this is one of the reasons why the “meeting” becomes so important. Other reports also indicate that the hosts in farm holidays play a significant role in the making of a good experience during the stays (Nielsen et al. 2011), so it might simply be that it feels “exotic” to meet people who live in a completely different way.

Involvement and relax

In the tourist sector, it has often been experiences that generate emotions like sensation of flow, emotional involvement and great excitement. However, not all people are interested in grand experiences at all times. Sometimes we also need to be freed from experiences (Blichfeldt et al. 2007). According to Christian Jantzen and Micheal Vetner, research into the physiological and psychological effects of experiences explains the wish for different types of experiences. When our body has a high stress level, we will have a need to relax and perform calming activities to get a feeling of pleasure, whereas when our stress level is low we will want to get active and be challenged so that we can change our stress level and feel pleasure again (Jantzen & Vetner 2007). An important part of being involved is the use of the senses: hearing, touching, tasting, seeing, and smelling. A good experience combines and challenges all of the human senses in a pleasant or at least interesting way (Lund 2005). The different senses are not always naturally affected at all the destinations, but on organic farms most of the senses get triggered automatically. However, it is different to what degree the farmers ask the guest to smell something particular or taste different products.

Most people today want a personal experience and therefore the co-creation of the experiences is so important. How successful an experience is evaluated to be often depends on the involvement of the guests in the experience. The wish for involvement can differ from person to person (Johansen & Jørstad 2006) but often involvement will create better experiences than when the guests are simply passive spectators (Prahalad & Ramaswamy 2004). To get people involved in the co-creation of the organic experiences, the farmers often engage them in the production, give them small assignments, or give the guests the chance to take photos. What surprised us is that photo opportunities are extremely important for most visitors. They use the camera as an adult way of playing a new role as a farmer and interact with the surroundings like a scene in a theater. It is important that they get engaged and feel ownership toward the experience (Mossberg 2003). To do that, we have suggested that the farmers also may work with different choices that affect the design and combination of the tour. It does not take very much to personalize each experience.

In our R&D projects, both learning experiences and relaxing experiences have been identified. Different places and different organic experiences can meet the tourists who need to relax and do nothing. Farmers offering farm holidays have experienced that visitors find great pleasure in staying there, because they get to relax and try the concept of being bored and enjoy nature and the calm lifestyle. Other farms work with team building and involvement in the production where the stress factor is higher. On some of the farms, it is also possible to vary the activities the visitors do from day to day so that designing the experiences may be according to the guest's state of mind – or body. If you want to be involved you do that and if you want to relax that too is an option.

When studying the involvement on the organic farms, we found that the learning aspect of the activities becomes essential. Pine and Gilmore argue that a good experience involves a learning dimension and from the “typical” use of experience we can also gain knowledge about this dimension. The understanding of the term “experience” differs in Danish and English. The English language might be the best way to describe the possibilities of how an experience can create learning experiences and new understandings. The Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary defines an experience as “An event or activity that affects you in some way”, whereas The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary describes it as “Something that happens to you that affects the way you feel” (Blichfeldt et al. 2007). Both of these definitions imply that something happens after an experience that changes a feeling or affects you. If one looks at it from a psychological point of view, experiences are ways to touch and affect specific people's self-understanding because a first-hand experience will be placed in our minds much better than a secondhand experiences that we are taught in school or have read about in a book (Jantzen & Jensen 2006). In this understanding, experiences touch and move a person's idea of how the world is, its norms, systems, traditions and habits and starts processes toward new understandings of the person's identity, values and understanding of the world (Jantzen & Vetner 2007). Here, experiences can be seen as a way to change people's mindset about different subjects. From our observations on tours to organic farmers, the guests were curious about the organic production and lifestyle and they explained afterward that it had been an education to get involved in the experiences through involvement in production, stories about taste and quality and meeting with the farmers and being exposed to their passion for green values.

A model for the design of organic experiences

From interviews with the farmers and testing their experiences, we conclude that one of the most important things in their guidance, is to give people an understanding of the organic values and production methods, and tell the story from stable to table combined with their personal lifestyle and values. From such combined firsthand stories, on the spot where production takes place, in a site of manifold activities, the tourist may develop new understandings, emotions and ideas which might lead to more differentiated and cultural–pragmatic comprehensions of organic food and environmental concerns. The meeting with the farmer and her/his lifestyle is a core component of the organic experience. Thereafter, the farm environment and the involvement of the senses and the mind is important.

The most experienced economy-focused farmers consider which of the farms' products the visitors should try, and where they should be standing. Where do I have a view that the guest just has to see (photo opportunity)? How does my farm express my values and does it corresponds to my values? Or should I plan not to get the tractors running while I tell my story so that they can hear what I say?

Inspired by Lena Mossberg′s matrix about design of experience by combining two different sets of factors to get different kinds of experiences (from interview), we have found that the matrix model might be useful for identifying what is at stake when combined with the knowledge from our research. We have developed a matrix that combines the parameters identified through the empirical research, mentioned above, and theatrical background in the experience literature. We have tried to make it as simple as possible so that farmers may use it in the development of an experience. Farmers can use it as a tool to describe and brainstorm on what kind of experiences they may have at the present time, and eventually want in each of the places where they meet their customers – both in a literal way on their farm but also the storytelling in their packaging, on their homepage, etc.

The potential for the new eco-attractions

Pine and Gilmore also argue that businesses can gain more profit per product if they use experiences as a way to market their products. In our many visits at organic farms, we collected data about what positive outcome the farmers have experienced and what their motivations for engaging in the experience economy were (Pine & Gilmore 1999).

Many of the already developed attractions sell organic commodities such as vegetables, food, accommodation, etc. and want to increase their sales by strengthening the relationship between customer and the company through their experiences and storytelling. Surprisingly, economy was not the only motivation. Other kinds of motivation where also to be detected among the interviewed pioneers, these involved better customer relations, local development, involving citizens in green values and get a better work life.

According to both experience professors and governmental reports, the benefit of the experience economy is argued to be significant economical profit and growth (Pine & Gilmore 1999; Erhvervs- Og Økonomiministeriet 2003; Jantzen & Rasmussen 2007). Also Danish national reports declare that the experience economy can create great growth and big potentials (Erhvervsministeriet 2000; Erhvervs- Og Økonomiministeriet 2003; Erhvervsministeriet 2007). The question is if this is true for all kinds of companies?

In our research, we can see that the experiences that the farmers sell for a price gives different kind of income. Small activities like guided tours, often do not create that much profit, maybe 10 Euros per guest or so and a challenge in this aspect is that many farmers find that it is difficult to sell their guided tours and visits, because many of their customers believe a visit on a farm should be free of charge. Therefore, it seems that different strategies are being used. Either they make bigger kinds of concepts where the customer gain more involvement or activity through overnight stay, dinners, teambuilding, involvement in production and tastings that combined gives the guest a greater experience. Or they make it very cheap if not free to visit their farm and interact on a guided tour or so, because it helps them sell their main goods and crops from the farm. The experience can help frame their product as special quality products. Within this strategy, they use the experiences to make storytelling involving the companies' stories, quality values and production standards; they establish trust between the customer and the company so that they can sell their products for a higher price than normally.

This strategy seems only to be used and to function when the farmer has small farm shops or sells by subscription so that the experience can be combined with the selling of the product. Otherwise the packaging of the product has to be combined with the storytelling so they are recognizable in the big chains if that is where they sell their products. Another way of working with extra profit per product is to create customer loyalty. One of the visited, large organic farms that have evaluated the experience economy made a study of the effect of their cheap organic dinners that they offer to new customers. By showing their farm and letting the guests hear their story, touch and taste the vegetables and even help them harvest and experience the brand, they gained twice as many loyal customers compared to the groups that were not invited to visit their farm. In this sense, loyal customers imply that the customers stay customers for twice the length of time and that they also bought more goods from the company, than the ones that were not invited. Also, the groups of people that simply get an invitation become more loyal to the produce and they also buy more. For that reason it seems that experiences are a good way to create better customer loyalty. Today food goes through so many hands, and each stop on the way has the potential to tell a story, but also to create disgust and distrust. For many years, companies have told stories about their products that are not always true (Jacobsen 2008). To create the good experience, it is argued that all of the steps in the value chain have to be optimized to create good food experiences in the end (Jacobsen 2008). We argue that the visits to the local farmers are a perfect way to tell the true stories and create trust between consumer and production companies and farmers.

We have witnessed how the hosts by their work enthusiasm, skills, and detailed knowledge of the practical–ecological aspects of their utility, place or create a loaded atmosphere of awareness and comfort for visitors' learning by seeing it with their own eyes, questioning, tasting, relating, and doing. As long as the stories told are true and the sites and the experiences correspond with the stories so that the customer also feels it is true, we see that trust becomes an outcome of the experience.

Another opportunity when working with experience is the possibility to compete in areas other than price. A lot of the farmers we have interviewed work with experiences because it gives them the possibility to work more value-based – and even to do better than the standards for organic production, because the experiences and the staging of their products as culinary quality food contribute to more profit per product, which make room for more quality in the work. Another life aspect is that a lot of the farmers like to develop a closer relationship with the customers and be able to work more creatively with experience designs, etc.

The last motivation we detected is to spread positive knowledge and trust to the organic values in general. This seems to be more altruistic motivations and the organic farmers explained that it was necessary for them to create trust to get more people to buy organic and act environmental friendly. It made them feel good to talk about their values and spread the word. However, even though we identified some learning aspects and the guests mentioned the new understandings that they got through the events, this paper cannot conclude whether or not it can create preferences for organic products. We did not follow the guests to their home and study what kind of effect the events had on their behavior. Future research will perhaps clarify this unstudied area and create new interesting understandings of the field and its possibilities in greening the guests behavior.

Challenges

In the many study visits through the projects, we gained insight into some of the obstacles and challenges that many of the farmers meet in their daily designing and creation of organic experiences or start-up problems that they had in the beginning.

When the farmers work with farming only, it is a challenge to find the time to get involved in a new sector. New knowledge about the tourist sector is necessary to be able to compete with other destinations. Lars Fuglsang argues that companies can have a tendency toward silo thinking (Fuglsang 2007). This means that they are specialized in one area but that these qualifications can actually become a barrier because they cannot seem to think in new ways. In organic experiences, the knowledge about farming is necessary to give the customers insights into farming life, but they also have to know how to communicate this knowledge and involve the guests in different ways, and in general use actions that involve emotions and creativity in a way that they are not educated in. Also, because they are used to other kinds of businesses and competitive advantages, it can be difficult to change this mind set and way of thinking, hence the need for training and knowledge about experience economy.

Conclusion

For the economic and political cause to enhance the sales, provision and access to local and organic food in the same local regions, the formation of a new type of eco-tourism niche is an option that farmers and food shops may step into. This requires a change of strategy from exclusively greening tourism by strategies of diminishing the environmental burden from tourists, to a strategy of co-development of a niche for environmental tourism with an effort to pull or empower local farmers to open their business for eco-experiences embedded in local destination branding. When previous efforts in sustainable tourism started to unfold in Denmark, the involvement of destination areas, local producers and products became more important. Similarly, we have learnt that forming a niche requires more than just getting tourism actors and networks engaged with the idea, or in formulating standards, concepts, publishing and marketing eco-sites. We failed to get destination actors seriously involved, and accordingly we succeed to engage local food producers and organic farmers in discussing and developing concepts for organic experiences. As a result of this effort, they became far more eager be an active part of a niche formation in environmental tourism. It is exactly the promises of gaining engagement value and income from organic experiences in the tourism trade and food trade that motivates these actors to become niche agents.

The main conclusion from the experience research part is that the important component in organic experiences is the frame of the experience (history, values, etc.), the involvement of the guest or the stimulation of senses. The educational aspect and the meeting with the farmers are the most important components. It can be concluded that organic experiences, also according to the farmers, emphasize meaning and education and probably do so more than most experiences.

The outcomes of the work with experience development among organic farmers are economic, environmental, and also personal. Opening up a farm for visitors may create a better economy because it creates a connection between the customer and the organic farm. In some cases, this has resulted in more loyal customers and customers who buy more. The farmers benefit from a closer relationship with the customers and have a higher option to create or maintain a niche or small-scale production with high quality produce. What matters most for the experience of visiting an organic farm is the farmers' personal values and hands-on knowledge about animal welfare, climate, etc.

Perspective

The growing interest and engagement of organic farmers and their trade organizations in our development of experience design, gives us a clear indication of the conditions for mobilizing the organic trade to take part in the formation of a niche for eco-tourism. The project reveals that the largest obstacles to the organic experiences include: limited time, lack of knowledge about the tourism and event business, and difficulties in motivating the organic customers to travel to the countryside. Therefore, organic farmers are not able to lift ecotourism by themselves. While they work on the specific product, municipalities, networks and local as well as national tourist organisations have to accelerate the development and the marketing of the local attractions to make the whole concept become an innovative niche. While there is a flourishing focus on local culinary tourism and local food events, the potential in Denmark's organic farms for being involved in the experience economy have so far only been exploited by a few farms.

Notes

1. The R&D project, Organic Experience Innovation, is part of a larger project, GRO, sponsored by Region Zealand and the EU Regional Fund. The first stages of the PPP unit consisted of VisitEastDenmark, Roskilde University/ENSPAC Dpt., and two incoming bureaus: Viewpoint Scandinavia and BDP. The partners in the current GRO project are led by Green Center.

2. The environmental learning project have similarly focused on eco-front cases such as eco-communities, resilient water systems development, environmentally friendly commuting, renewable energy provision, housing, waste handling, etc.

3. Sustainable tourism may mislead us to consider this as a final stage of a perfect balance. But the concept relates to the efforts in a continuous development of environmental improvements in a systemic perspective. Thus leisure, learning and travelling will always have an environmental impact.