The Agritourism Farm

How these numbers were built: the cost to open comes from the opening kit, priced item by item from USDA NASS 2025 land values, builder and supplier pages (post-frame buildings, restroom trailers, coolers, tractors and wagons), and extension budgets for a corn maze and pick-your-own strawberries. Owner earnings and resale multiples come from BizBuySell’s 2021 to 2025 agriculture benchmarks; seasonal labor is anchored to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics wages for farmworkers (SOC 45-2092); the industry classification comes from the Census Bureau (NAICS 713990); industry direction comes from USDA ERS analysis of the 2022 Census of Agriculture; SBA loan outcomes come from PeerSense’s analysis of SBA records for NAICS 713990; financing terms come from the SBA; and survival rates come from the Census Bureau’s Business Dynamics Statistics. Visitors are counted over the whole year, so the defaults describe an average month: fall weekends run far above it and winter months below. Cost of goods, grounds and marketing shares are planning estimates from direct-marketing trade material (NAFDMA and Farm Bureau). These are starting assumptions; the moment you enter a real farm’s visitor counts, spend, events calendar and seasonal payroll, your numbers should replace ours.

The SDE margin band sits on the owner cash flow basis the app shows, checked against BizBuySell’s 2021 to 2025 agriculture benchmarks (median owner earnings about 21% of revenue). Labor-cost figures are anchored to BLS farmworker wage data (SOC 45-2092). Revenue-mix, spend-per-visitor, and the other cost bands are compiled from NAFDMA and Farm Bureau direct-marketing and agritourism trade material, which does not publish a single audited benchmark table; treat them as informed industry-typical estimates and verify against a real farm P&L, especially given how much weather swings any single season.