A conceptual model proposal for farm tourism

Tourism activities provides significant returns in terms of economy. But if the plans are made economic return based, natural sources can be damaged irreversibly. Farm Tourism is nested with rural tourism that it protects the natural and cultural values and enriches them. Because of misuse and overuse of cultural and natural values, which plunders and destroys them, agro-tourism is compatible with sustainability principle. Not only in our country but also in the world the attention to the farm tourism has been increasing day by day and diversifying of the farm is supported within the context of tourism activities. In the rural areas, with the re-increasing value of the idle and waste terrains, buildings provide economic return to the local people. This condition enables to decrease the migration to the cities even makes them return to the rural areas. In this direction farm tourism not only provides a side income to the local people but also it provides them to know, increase and not disappear their cultural values. It becomes current issue to getting rid of the rural areas as an idle. Whit this survey, we put forward not only Turkey's farm tourism potential but also we try to work up a cognitive method suggestion in accordance with the data we obtained from a research. This survey includes the meetings which were made with the men in charge of doing farm tourism business in Turkey and also it includes the observations, participated observations and data which are supported by investigation of documents. The findings were presented by descriptive methods with schedules. The survey's results show that the people, who are doing farm tourism, are mostly immigrants from cities to rural areas. They became a role model for people, who are leaving from the cities because of missing the life in rural areas and they adopted the natural production and the life in the rural areas by opening their farms to the people who wants to move there. Although there are lots of supports for the farm tourism, they contain too much formality for the rural people to put up with. In this direction, the legislation on farm operations and farm tourism in our country needs to be made simpler and has to provide higher level of applicability. Keywords: Tourism, Farm Tourism, Rural Areas, Rural Development