Abstract:

The TaTuTa project (Agricultural Tourism Exchange) was established with the aim of voluntarily supporting the farmers’ families that provide ecological farming and survival in issues such as finance, labour and information. The project aims to raise awareness of ecological agriculture practices by offering visitors the opportunity to live and learn in natural-friendly agricultural production areas. In this direction, farm owners offer the possibility of agricultural tourism by welcoming domestic and foreign tourists who want to participate in agricultural activities, and tourists also contribute to agricultural production in these farms as labour and capital. The aim of the study is to identify the ability of TaTuTa ecological farms to turn the crisis created by the Covid-19 pandemic into an opportunity and to identify the strategies they implement during the pandemic period. In this context, data were collected by sending an online interview form to the managers of a total of 75 TaTuTa farms operating in Turkey. According to this, 11 of the farms under the sampling were found to avoid taking risks in a crisis environment and have not developed any strategy, have stopped agricultural tourism activities and visitors’ acceptance. The 10 farms who want to turn the pandemic into an opportunity and are at risk have been found to have managed to turn the crisis into an opportunity by developing strategies such as product expansion, product differentiation, holding and focusing.

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