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• Agritourism Strategy

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Del Norte County could hold its own against ag tourism meccas like Napa and Sonoma through collaboration with neighboring communities, supporting small entrepreneurs and urging larger local producers to diversify.

Consultant Michael Stumpf, of Place Dynamics, outlined this conclusion in a study Del Norte County commissioned with $80,250 in 2020 Community Development Block Grant dollars.

It wasn’t a ground-breaking revelation to District 3 Supervisor Chris Howard, whose employer, Alexandre Dairy, was mentioned in the study. But it might be the tool local economic development organizations and growers like Easter lily bulb producers Dahlstrom & Watt need to tap into that industry, he said.

“We as a community really need to think differently about how we bring money back into this economy, how we get that dollar to stay here longer and expand,” Howard told the Wild Rivers Outpost on Wednesday. “That involves utilizing every resource that is left to generate that dollar including agriculture, including moms that want to create a product in their home — to make sure that product’s not only sold here, but sold outside our area, which in turn attracts more consumers.”

Defining a tourist as someone who lives at least 100 miles away from the area they’re visiting and using cell phone data, Place Dynamics’ Agritourism Strategy states that about 1.5 million people visited Crescent City in 2022.

The Eureka-Arcata area saw 5.4 million visitors and 1.3 million tourists traveled to Brookings. In Del Norte County, Redwood National and State Parks was the primary draw, the study found, with 458,400 people visiting in 2022.

Place Dynamics cited Visit California’s estimate that tourists spent $130.4 million in Del Norte County in 2021, which in turn generated $12.7 million in state and local taxes and created 1,400 jobs.
During his presentation to the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, Stumpf also cited Redwood National and State Parks data showing that visitors spend an average of $70.89 per day, or roughly $30.9 million per year.

A 1 percent increase in the number of visitors to Crescent City could result in about $1.3 million in additional tourism spending, he said, which would generate roughly $12,000 in tax revenue for the county.

Del Norte County is already attracting people with a strong interest in farm-to-table dining experiences, locally sourced craft products and other agri-tourism related activities, Stumpf said. Though travel in Del Norte County is seasonal, that season coincides with harvest seasons for some of its agricultural products, which Stumpf said also includes fisheries and forestry.

To capitalize on that market, Del Norte should expand its offerings, which could include restaurants featuring local products on its menu — Stumpf used SeaQuake Brewing as a good example — or growing the local craft food business.

“Eureka has done a phenomenal job in this. I think we found something like 200 small craft producers in the county, in Humboldt County,” he said. “Those organizations that serve that market also say they serve Del Norte County. We need to build that relationship a little bit better and then create a market awareness so people recognize this as a place where they can go and find those local products.”

Stumpf said a more regional approach that also includes collaborating with Curry County could work to the region’s advantage. This creates a 250-mile length of U.S. 101, and since the growing season varies from north to south the travel season is extended a little.

Creating an agricultural food trail was an initiative Stumpf gave for expanding the region’s agritourism potential and is something Curry County already has. He said there’s strong interest in expanding that trail.

Other initiatives Stumpf recommended include engaging with small farmers and ranchers, working with craft food producers on a distribution hub as well as providing marketing assistance.

Del Norte County and Crescent City also lacks a a destination point, Stumpf said. This could be the Downtown Crescent City area or the Crescent City Harbor or both.

In her staff report, Toni Self, the county’s administrative services manager, said the idea behind the agriculture tourism study was to increase the community’s knowledge and understanding of local agricultural areas and enhance Del Norte’s economic viability as a destination.

Creating living-wage jobs and preserving Del Norte’s agricultural culture and heritage were also important, according to Self’s staff report.

On Wednesday, Self and Howard both said they hoped Place Dynamics’ Agritourism Strategy wouldn’t sit on the shelf and collect dust. But, Self said, it would be on business owners and outside entities to bring those initiatives to fruition.

Del Norte County could help facilitate those goals, Self said. She said she’ll post the study on the county’s website and send it to the Del Norte Visitors Bureau and the Crescent City-Del Norte County Chamber of Commerce.

“We kind of expected it to come back this way,” she said. “Having implementation strategies is going to help us address the gaps in tourism and bring people here as a destination rather than just a pass-through.”

Del Norte County economic development and tourism organizations have long been interested in agriculture tourism, Howard said. It’s included in the county’s Community Economic Development Strategy document and was the topic of an economic summit a few years ago.

Since one of the strategies includes collaboration with Curry and Humboldt counties, Del Norte should work to reconnect with those contacts and ask if they’d be willing to form a regional hub. The Visitors Bureau and Chamber of Commerce may be the best organizations to facilitate those conversations, he said, though people producing local products could have those discussions as well.

“Landowners themselves may be interested in developing more of a tourism-associated business,” Howard said. “For instance, Dahlstrom & Watt having lily bulb tours or Palmer-Westbrook having focused discussions on grass-fed beef or dairy. Those are key conversations to see if there’s a willingness of any partner and stakeholder to sit down and see if we could gain traction to put this on the ground.”

On Tuesday, Howard's colleague, District 5 Supervisor Dean Wilson, whose family owns Ocean World, said Del Norte County could do a better job promoting what it has. He used a recent trip to Roswell, New Mexico as an example.

"Every gas station sells t-shirts and googly beads for your head and a green mask for your face. They're selling something that happened 75 years ago and is not tangible and it brings people from all over the country, all over the world," Wilson said. "Del Norte County has tangible. We have beauty that rivals any place I've ever traveled in this world. And that's incredibly marketable, but we do a terrible job."

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