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Farmstays
- A unique South African experience
 Affordable exclusivity and wide-open spaces are two great selling points. Farm stays offer both, and a great deal besides. The prosaic perception is that farms are agricultural and forestry production units. However, with tourism now a growing industry and agriculture declining in many parts of South Africa, things are changing. All land lying beyond the borders of urban areas are national assets and farmers are finding new ways of profiting from their custodianship.
Potentially a major but still vastly under-utilized ecotourism resource, farms incorporate natural features, such as rivers, mountains and wildlife, as well as the cultural heritage, ranging from bushman paintings to battlefields and historical homes; reflect the diversity of and relationships within contemporary culture; and have special attributes such as space, tranquility and spectacular starlit skies.
Collectively, agents, publicity associations and landowners around South Africa market thousands of farm stays offering direct access to almost every landscape and ecological region, and to several popular adventure activities: hiking, horse-riding, 4X4 driving, mountain biking, fishing and hunting. In addition, working farms accessible to tourists cover a very wide range of farming activities: from bee keeping to cattle ranching. Many serve as base for special-interest travel, through historical battlefields and the wine lands, for instance.
Farms have great potential to fulfill one of the main promises of ecotourism: spreading wealth to communities where it is most needed. But of course not all guest farms are automatically included in the ecotourism domain. Apart from benefiting as many members of the host community as possible, the farm stay offered as a form of ecotourism also has to ensure guest participation and enlightenment, and promote conservation of heritage resources.
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