Field to Table: A virtual farm tour

Purpose of the Project

The Town of Georgina hosted its first-ever Field to Table event in Aug. 2018. Farmers in the area opened their doors to the public; providing tours, samples and highlighting what they have to offer. The self-guided tour through Georgina’s landscape was a great success with approximately 1,200 visitors overall at seven locations.  Due to the success of 2018, interest from the farm community grew, and in 2019 more farms joined the event and visitor numbers grew.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic made a significant impact on our tourism landscape with over 90% of the tourism events within Georgina cancelled. To preserve the Field to Table event and support our agri-tourism sector, the Economic Development and Tourism Division and our 9 agri-partners decided to try something new and pivot to a virtual agri-tourism experience with the following goals:

• To increase awareness of Georgina’s agri-businesses by communicating value to potential customers.
• To build capacity of the existing farm gate sales operations
• To encourage current customers to increase their purchasing frequency from Georgina agri-businesses.

Effectiveness

Build the capacity of the existing farm gate sales operations and communicating value to potential customers.

• To meet this objective we created nine videos highlighting each farm and their unique value propositions to our target audience. Each week between June 23 and July 25, a new video was released on the Economic Development and Tourism Facebook page, advertised through Facebook, and shared through additional social channels.
• A Facebook Live virtual tour of all nine locations was scheduled on July 25, and shared through the Economic Development and Tourism Facebook page. Every hour on Saturday, July 25 between 9 am and 5 pm, participants were able to experience a virtual tour of some of our most diverse farms.
• The pre-recorded videos and live events were viewed more than 250,000 times on our Facebook channels between June 23 and August 1, 2020.

Encourage current customers to increase their purchasing frequency

• All of our Field to Table farmers have seen an increase in sales in 2020. The majority of the farmers saw an increase in sales by over 30% and an increase in repeated purchases from customers.
• Our “shop local” messaging attached to our Field to Table social media posts has been echoed within the community and residents are voicing their support in our business community.

Challenges & Changes made

The most challenging aspect of the virtual Field to Table tour on July 25, was the internet connectivity in our rural areas. A large portion of our agri-partners faced connection issues during the live Facebook event and had to do multiple segments during their designated time slot.

We gathered this data and shared this with our Council and York Region. We are focused on improving our internet connectivity within the next few years.

Target Audience

Our target audience for the Field to Table pre-recorded segments and virtual tour were the following:

Female, 35 – 55 in Georgina and neighbouring communities within 50 km. Interests: Agri-business, Fresh Produce, Kids Activities

Sustainability Plans

The Economic Development and Tourism Division is planning to continue to grow this event next year with the potential to add culinary experiences that use products from our agri-partners. We strive to become an agri-tourism leader in York Region by investing in and supporting our agri-tourism sector.

Submissions