Increasing Socio-economic Resilience of Utuado Farmers through
Agritourism
Huda Khalife
April 25, 2021
SARE Project Team & Utuado Farmers

This material is based upon work that is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S.
Department of Agriculture, under award number LS20-339 through the Southern Sustainable Agriculture
Research and Education program. USDA is an equal opportunity employer and service provider.

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Acknowledgements
In order to successfully complete this project, I have relied on the guidance and support of many
mentors, subject matter experts, project partners, and stakeholders in the US and in Puerto Rico.
I would like to thank Paul Prosser, who patiently provided support on our surprise-filled project
management experiences throughout this final year.
I would like to thank my primary advisor and mentor, Dr. Katja Brundiers, who both initially
introduced me to the SARE Project and who was always there to kindly and patiently guide me
along the way. I would like to thank Dr. Arnim Wiek, who first made this project connection,
and whose life-changing visionary guidance throughout the MSUS program is evident
throughout my CE project.
I would also like to thank Dr. Patrick Holladay and Dr. Pablo Mendez-Lazaro, who welcomed
me onto the larger SARE Project team, supported me with guidance and resources throughout,
and entrusted me with the coordination of key community engagement activities.
I would like to thank my fellow ASU students on the team, Anais Delilah Roque and Kasey
Cretors, as well as the UPR student team who were all readily available to share ideas and
collaborate, including Laura Cabrera Rivera, among others.
I would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to Nilda Luhring Gonzalez, a powerhouse of
resources and networking and one of my biggest supporters and sources of guidance who resides
in Puerto Rico and I have yet to meet in person.
I would like to thank Dr. Lisa Chase from the University of Vermont for her openness to connect
and her generosity in sharing her time and expertise.
And finally, I would like to thank my constant supporters: my family and friends that remained
by my side throughout this well worth it roller-coaster of a ride.

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Abstract
Utuado, Puerto Rico, is a region that has witnessed many natural hazards, most notably
Hurricane Maria that struck the island in 2017 and irrevocably altered its landscape to this day
(Holladay et al., 2019; Ortiz, 2020; Benach et al., 2019). In combination with layers of preexisting vulnerability, such as socio-economic vulnerability and food insecurity, this has made
for a disaster situation (Klein, 2018; Benach et al., 2019; Garriga-López, 2019). However, this
disaster has also opened up a window for citizens to rise up and self-organize for the
revitalization of their shared communities and spaces; in the agricultural sector, this has
manifested as a drive towards a stronger regional economy and the building of food sovereignty
through agritourism (Holladay et al., 2019).
My Master of Sustainability Solutions (MSUS) Culminating Experience (CE) project supports
this local movement through a collaboration with key local farmers to identify local farm assets
through the reconstruction of solution strategies (Forrest & Wiek, 2014) and the designing of an
educational program for the adaptation and scaling of identified sustainability solutions to other
regional farms (Fraser & Galinsky, 2010). The intended outcomes for this project include (1)
building of community resilience and livelihood opportunity; (2) increasing of awareness and
knowledge of agritourism best practices; (3) dissemination of knowledge on practices to increase
farm- and visitor-readiness; (4) and strengthening and interconnection of regional economy
players. Based on the array of exemplary farms and enterprises that I have conducted research on
and engaged with through this project, I have witnessed the potential that the widespread
dissemination of agritourism best practices offers for the progressive building up of the regional
economy in Utuado, Puerto Rico.

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Table of Contents
Introduction and Background……………………………………………………………………..5

Literature Review………………………………………………………………….………………6

Project Approach and Intervention Methods……………..……………………….………………7

Outputs and Outcomes.………………………………...……………………………………...…10

Discussion………………………...………………………………………………………...……12

Conclusion.………………………………………….…………………………...………………14

Appendix 1……………………………………………………………………………………….16
Appendix 2……………………………………………………………………………………….18

References………………………………………………………...……………………………...19

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Introduction and Background
The hurricane that struck the island of Puerto Rico in September of 2017 was one that would
permanently alter the lives of many for years to come; loved ones were lost, basic needs were far
out of reach, and many had become internally displaced (Garcia-Lopez, 2018). However, the
impacts of this natural hazard were not felt equally by all: What came as a disaster to some, was
easily recoverable from by a small minority of others (Garcia-Lopez, 2018). Directly
contributing to the experiencing of natural hazards as disasters is the level of vulnerability of a
group of people to major impacts (Wisner, et. al, 2012). In one of the hardest hit regions of
Puerto Rico, the municipality of Utuado, this progression of vulnerability includes a range of
dispersed effects including a lack of livelihood opportunity (Klein, 2018; Garriga-López, 2019),
a large proportion of citizens living below the poverty line (U.S. Department of the Treasury), a
lack of access to basic necessities and high quality food (Klein, 2018; Benach et al., 2019),
increasing farm abandonment and outmigration (Garriga-Lopez, 2019; Klein, 2018), and a high
level of dependence on imported food (Klein, 2018). This precarious situation to a certain
segment of the population points to inter-regional justice issues and the fact that natural hazards,
combined with compounding layers of vulnerability, pose a significant level of harm to
ecosystem, human, and economic viability and integrity over the long term. The impending risk
of additional hazard-related shock to the region also points to the urgency of the situation overall.
To add to this is the contestation of this issue’s existence and importance, as demonstrated in the
“national and federal government’s inept…responses…histories of unjust planning, and colonialneoliberal institutions” (Garcia-Lopez, 2018). This includes a US-imposed shift away from
agricultural production, subsequent food import dependence, and an overall lack of public
infrastructure investment (Klein, 2018; Valentin Ortiz, 2020). The unaddressed destruction after
Hurricane Maria across all sectors has had progressively exacerbating long-term and dispersed
effects on the health, education, and economic situation of Puerto Rican citizens, many of which
have opted to relocate to the US mainland or elsewhere in search of better quality of life and
greater livelihood opportunity (Klein, 2018). While Puerto Rican farmers historically used
traditional planting practices conducive to environmental integrity and biodiversity, the shift to
industrialization and mono-cropping guidelines dictated to farmers caused much of the
indigenous knowledge and practice to be lost (Klein, 2018). Adding to the urgency, COVID-19

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has worsened the situation for many families that suffer from extreme food insecurity (Florido,
2020). While this complex web of deteriorating issues is a dire reality for communities like the
ones in Utuado, the government continually fails to invest in basic infrastructure, underpinning
much of the problem at hand (Holladay et al., 2019; Ortiz, 2020; Klein, 2018).
The sustainability problem that my project addresses is the lack of livelihood opportunity and
economic development in the region, and I jointly address this issue with local farmers through
agritourism educational programming. The problem of high socio-economic vulnerability in
Utuado communities was analyzed using a systems perspective of the effects, immediate causes,
and root causes of the sustainability issue at hand (see Background section of the CE SARE Full
Project Report) which I use to design and develop a contextually-appropriate solution.
Literature Review
Given the range of issues stemming from high socio-economic vulnerability in Utuado, much
research has been conducted that explores existing community-driven solutions. Research shows
that self-organization can build community resilience, in turn supporting “sustainability, public
health and risk reduction” (Holladay et al., 2019). In fact, the related concept known in Puerto
Rico as auto-gestión, or autonomous organizing, refers to the same type of community-driven
action that has been at the core of post-disaster recovery and rebuilding on the island (GarrigaLópez, 2019). In the context of survival needs and desire for decolonization, this type of
community organizing has converged around building food sovereignty for its transformative
potential in the ‘building back better’ of Puerto Rico communities (Garriga-López, 2019). In
addition, food sovereignty is at the heart of addressing an urgent issue surrounding extreme food
insecurity and a need for access to healthy and high-quality food (Florido, 2020).
Intricately tied to this vision of working towards food sovereignty are the concepts of
agroecology and small-scale farming, which have also been shown to demonstrate resilience in
the face of disaster risk, as in the case of recurring hurricanes (Garriga-López, 2019). In Utuado,
a promising solution for socio-economic development that communities are mobilizing towards
is agritourism (Holladay et al., 2019). Agritourism is an emerging economic activity that
combines agroecological methods and tourism for diversified livelihood potential, sustainable
practices, cultural preservation and appreciation, and smaller scale food sovereignty (UN, 2020;

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Mendez-Toro, 2019; Holladay et al., 2019). While certain types of tourism have proven to
demonstrate negative impacts on environmental and cultural integrity in the past, communitybased tourism that draws on the individual assets of community members and is coupled with
sustainable development goals has proven to foster social-ecological resilience (Holladay et al.,
2019). Despite the wide range of long-term positive impacts of agritourism, the new push for
agritourism among Utuado community organizers, and the presence of farms and farmland,
many farms have been abandoned in a search for better livelihood opportunity (Holladay et. al.,
2019). Based on the transformative potential of agritourism for the Utuado community in terms
of positive public health outcomes, social and environmental resilience, and disaster risk
reduction (Holladay et al., 2019), local Utuado farmers would benefit from increased agritourism
knowledge dissemination and practice for the building of a stronger regional economy.
Much research has been conducted on the impacts of sustainable farming in the past. Among the
research yielded is the Framework for Assessing the Sustainability of Natural Resource
Management Systems (MESMIS), an indicator-based sustainability assessment framework
which was developed in the context of natural resource management systems throughout the
Latin American context (Astier et al., 2010). This framework is a valuable context-sensitive tool
for the evaluation and measurement of success in the pathway towards farmer success through
agritourism practices. Additionally, given the existence of both agritourism pioneers in Utuado
as well as a significant population of farmers still in development, the Forrest & Wiek (2014)
solution pathway reconstruction framework is another valuable tool for the strengthening of the
regional economy. This tool provides a connection between economy players at different stages
in order to leverage existing local farm assets for the strengthening of other regional farms.
Using these two well-established tools and others, the dissemination of agritourism knowledge
and practices can be explored for the building of socio-economic resilience in Utuado.
Project Approach and Intervention Methods
In this project, I combined my work as a Graduate Student Assistant (GSA) on the main
Southern Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) project with my own research
for my Culminating Experience (CE). The SARE project is a three-year project funded through
the USDA’s SARE grant program exploring the potential of agritourism as a means of increasing
resilience and agricultural sustainability in partnership with farmers, local universities and

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organizations in the Utuado region. As part of my GSA work, I supported the SARE project with
joint community framing activities, such as community-wide current state analysis, visioning
activity, and strategy building exercise based on the Wiek (2015) framework to set the
foundation for the project implementation phase. For my CE, I focused in on an array of regional
sustainable farms and enterprises, and delved deeper into the solution pathways of a few
exemplary farm- and visitor-ready farming entities in the region in order to develop an
agritourism intervention based on sustainability, resilience, and disaster management practices
and principles to support other farms in preparation for the full operation and accommodation of
visitors. My project consisted of three major parts:
Part I. Identifying regional sustainability solutions, which involved:
1. Developing surveys for preliminary data collection on key actions, tools, and resources
for farm success;
2. Creating a list of criteria for the identification of sustainable farms and enterprises; and
3. Conducting background research on identified regional sustainable farms and enterprises.
Part II. Reconstructing pathways to success of regional sustainable farms and enterprises, which
involved:
1. Developing and conducting interviews for a more detailed follow-up of a few exemplary
farms;
2. Reconstructing transition pathways based on interviews; and
3. Creating a list of criteria for the successful transition or development of a farm or
enterprise.
Part III. Developing an education and training program to support other farmers in learning
from this experience, which involved:
1. Identifying pertinent theory of change, focal risk factors, as well as program scope and
stakeholders; and
2. Developing a program addressing main elements and indicators, pilot program and
measures, and training and implementation based on reconstructed pathways.

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In order to achieve the project goals, my activities included attending monthly meetings with
both the research team and stakeholder team; collaborating with student peers and local
volunteers to contact and develop a working relationship with the farmers; assessing project
progress through a weekly meeting with my project advisor; and subscribing to resources such as
webinars and newsletters to gain insight on the agroecology and tourism scene in the region.
Tools that allowed me to reach my goals are the project management tools gained in this course,
as well as communication tools such as those gained in my regular Spanish courses.
Project Partners, Stakeholders & Subject Matter Experts. I have worked primarily with Dr. Katja
Brundiers (co-Primary Investigator (PI) of SARE project), Dr. Patrick Holladay (PI of the SARE
project) and Dr. Pablo Mendez-Lazaro (co-PI of SARE project), subject matter experts in
disaster resilience, sustainable agritourism, and community building, respectively. Collaborating
partners include Nilda Luhring from the Puerto Rico Tourism Company (PRTC), Dr. Javier
Perez and a student team from The University of Puerto Rico – Utuado, and Veronica
Dominguez from the OTOAO Primary Health Services and Socioeconomic Development
Corporation (COSSAO).
I have also done work focused on a few key project participants including Sr. Max Pérez Padró
and Sra. Evelyn Ortiz Avilés from the Permaculture Institute of Puerto Rico, and Sr. Jesus
Martes and Sra. Marisol Villalobos from Finca Amasar. These successful entities are key to
providing exemplary guidance for the expansion of sustainable agritourism throughout the
region. Additionally, I have begun the process of developing an education and training program
proposal for 15 identified farmers in the region seeking farm and visitor-readiness. The 2 main
farming entities have a unique farmer profile in that they have the time, network and material
assets that enable them to actively participate in this project. While the remainder of the 15
farmers may not share this same advantage, the process of developing an educational and
training program can be informed by first piloting the developed program with one of our
participating farmers.
Project Frameworks. Following are the supporting frameworks that were used, along with a short
description of their role in this project:

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1. The Transformational Sustainability Research (TSR) framework (Wiek & Lang,
2016) supported the building of a community-wide current state analysis, a sustainability
vision, and led into the back-casting of sustainability solutions.
2. The Framework for Analyzing, Assessing, and Improving Enterprises Towards
Sustainability (Wiek & Basile, 2020) provided the basis for which to comprehensively
analyze the sustainability performance of an enterprise, and is here used as a tool to
highlight exemplary farms and enterprises and their best practices.
3. The Principles for a Sustainable Local Food Economy (Wiek, 2020) supported in the
regional economy framing of the identified solutions, and in doing so tied the smaller
scale individual enterprise efforts to the larger goal of systemic change at hand.
4. The Framework for Assessing the Sustainability of Natural Resource Management
Systems (MESMIS) is a method developed specifically in the context of small farms in
Ibero-America, and was employed to evaluate the outcomes related to increased farm
resilience, sustainability, and economic activity (Astier, et al., 2012).
5. The Forrest & Wiek (2014) Transition Pathway Reconstruction framework,
representing the strategy development step of the TSR framework, supported in the
reconstruction of sustainability solutions (identified agritourism solutions) implemented
on the interviewed farms, which allowed us to identify evidence on what worked, where,
how, and why, and added credibility to the proposals for new strategies.
6. The Fraser & Galinsky (2010) Intervention Research Approach supported in the
adaptation and implementation of the proposed, evidence-supported strategy to other
regional farms through program development best practices.
Outputs and Outcomes
Outputs. Each phase of the project yielded key project outputs, including a list of Criteria for
Farm Sustainability, a portfolio of ten profiled regional sustainability enterprises, a set of
reconstructed pathways to success of a few key regional farms and enterprises, a list of criteria
for the successful transition or development of a farm or enterprise, and a place-specific
sustainable agritourism educational program. These project outputs served the following
purposes:

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1. A region-wide current state farmer survey was collaboratively developed to help in
creating a better big-picture understanding of the current strengths, resources, needs and
challenges of agritourism in the regions of Utuado, Ciales, Florida and Jayuya in Puerto
Rico.
2. The Criteria for Farm Sustainability (see Appendix 1) was employed to identify
regional sustainability solutions and assess their features and offerings based on their
level of sustainability, their role in the regional economy, and their level of agritourism
integrity.
3. Using the Criteria for Farm Sustainability, a portfolio of 10 identified exemplary
enterprises (see Part 1 of the CE SARE Full Project Report) was created in order to
highlight their key place-relevant offerings (and acknowledge areas for improvement).
Viewing the profiled enterprise strengths in conjunction yields a strong vision for a wellrounded exemplary farming enterprise.
4. A few excelling enterprises selected from the prior pool of identified exemplary
enterprises were selected for a more in-depth analysis, including Finca Amasar, Instituto
de Permacultura de Puerto Rico, and Plenitud PR, yielding 3 reconstructed transition
pathways to sustainability (see Appendix 2 to view an example pathway). Not only does
this tool enable us to identify exemplary enterprise outputs, but also it provides us with
insight into the transferrable key actions, actors, and barriers from initiation to current
state that contributed to their success.
5. A place-specific agritourism educational program, referred to as the Agritourism
Farmer Learning Community or Agroturismo Agrocultorx Comunidad de Aprendizaje
(A3), was developed and informed by all of the project outputs mentioned here and more
(see Part 3 of the CE SARE Full Project Report). This program provides an engaging
vehicle with which to transfer the existing regional sustainability solutions to a wider
range of existing and aspiring farmers. The program is 12 weeks long, each week
comprising of a participatory content module that provides participants the chance to visit
a different exemplary agritourism farm or enterprise each week to experience first-hand
farm best practices while simultaneously building their networks.

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Outcomes. At each point of my project thus far, I’ve had the chance to collaborate with different
project partners and stakeholders, which provided me with a range of feedback on key points and
items for potential development. Outcomes of the project thus far include increased project
partner awareness on the importance of holistic sustainability evaluations for farms and
enterprises, providing an opening for potential operationalization of the Criteria for Farm
Sustainability by community support organizations in the future, among others detailed below.
Exploring further opportunities for project development and completing each project part in it’s
entirety will allow for the generation of more outcomes moving forward.
In Part I of the project, I worked in close collaboration with our project partner from PRTC,
Nilda Luhring Gonzalez, to identify, contact, and collect information from exemplary farms and
enterprises throughout Puerto Rico. Ms. Gonzalez reviewed the Criteria for Farm Sustainability,
and in doing so revealed that the list of criteria could be a powerful tool with which to gain a
more holistic understanding of important information on enterprises that has not been previously
considered. An example of this is whether or not an enterprise employs individuals with
disabilities. This kind of information can help create connections and add support for sustainable
enterprises as by professionals like Ms. Gonzalez in their networking roles.
In Part II of the project involving the reconstruction of transition pathways, Dr. Katja Brundiers
provided valuable feedback on the utility of this tool for increasing the understanding of regional
economy players, their interconnections, and functions among communities and farmers. Part II
of the project will also be expanded upon once IRB approval is received and surveys and
interviews can be delivered.
In Part III of the project involving the training program, Dr. Lisa Chase, professor at the
University of Vermont and director of the Vermont Tourism Research Center who has extensive
experience delivering agritourism workshops, commended the training program for it’s farmerto-farmer learning approach, it’s place-based nature, and it’s strong sustainability framing. She
also provided recommendations with regards to the mode of delivery of the program, and caution
with regards to the potential impacts of tourism when left unchecked.
Discussion
Based on all of the data collected thus far on sustainable agritourism enterprises as pathways to
increased resilience, livelihood opportunity, and food security, results of analyzed enterprises

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and their interactions with local communities prove to reveal some gaps when analyzed through
a sustainability lens, but are very promising when viewed in conjunction with one another as
demonstrated in a wide array of key exemplary practices. Two major opportunity spaces that the
proposed educational program seeks to address are ensuring sustainability and agritourism
integrity across enterprises, as well as creating a better understanding of the local food economy
in which each farming enterprise plays a part. As revealed through an assessment of profiled
farms and enterprises, and confirmed by agritourism subject matter expert Dr. Lisa Chase, one
key opportunity for growth in agritourism development involves taking a step back on the
concerted push towards increased tourism, and taking a step forward with intentional
sustainability-driven tourism that centers around agroecological conservation and practices. In
creating this focus shift, not only are the dangers of unbridled touristic growth curbed, but also a
beneficial offering to society, environment and economy are ensured. Additionally, while we
present phenomenal examples of social collaboration between farming enterprises, creating a
public awareness of the local food economy and the instrumental role of each player in it would
enable increased success towards the desired community vision of food sovereignty. Only by
using community visioning and strategy development, and thinking on a community scale, can
an immense goal such as food sovereignty begin to be attained. It is in this sense that the placebased sustainable agritourism educational program has potential to offer subtle guidance in the
creating of larger scale change towards the sought-out community visions.
However, in addition to identified opportunities for growth are many exemplary practices, assets
and connections that can be powerful tools for farmers in the regional economy, once transferred.
These include themes surrounding local conservation and education, the building back better of
the community, and investment in the future generation of farmers. Excepting a few cases, a
large range of farms and enterprises do not view or practice sustainability in it’s complete
holistic sense, but rather excel at doing so in a siloed manner. By creating an educational
program that capitalizes on the existing exemplary farm practices, and presenting these in
conjunction with one another, a holistic practice of sustainability in agritourism enterprises can
be attained.
Next Steps. While this project has provided a start on the development of an informed farmer
educational and training program, there is much room for progress. Whether through my own
continued project involvement past MSUS program graduation for a period of 3 months, or

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through future MSUS student continuation on the project, both unavailable required project
components as well as areas worthy of expansion provide for many opportunities to continue to
develop this project. These opportunities for development include: (1) the operationalization and
delivery of developed surveys and interviews upon receiving IRB approval (which had been
initiated early in the semester, but experienced heavy delays in part due to the impact of COVID19 on the UPR IRB team); (2) the expansion of the pool of exemplary enterprises for which to
reconstruct transition pathways; (3) the deepening of the training program through reconstructed
pathways of exemplary enterprises; and (4) the piloting of the developed training program upon
completion to better inform the later program implementation phase.
Conclusion
The United States is a food superpower, the world’s largest food exporter, and one of the world’s
four top food producing countries (Investopedia). Despite this, the people of the US territory
Puerto Rico are dependent on importation for 85 percent of their food (NBC), all while being at
high risk of a variety of natural hazards in addition to multiple layers of vulnerability (Holladay
et al., 2019). This progression of vulnerability places the Puerto Rican population at high risk for
the incidence of disasters (Wisner, et. al, 2012; Garriga-López, 2019). It is in this context that the
growing movement for the building of food sovereignty by Utuado communities arose, and
specifically the movement towards agritourism (Holladay et al., 2019; Garriga-López, 2019).
While agritourism possesses a great potential for the building back better of communities in
Utuado and many rural areas of Puerto Rico, a deviation from the original sustainability and
agroecological integrity focus that lies at the heart of agritourism can bring about the opposite
results of unbridled tourism-related ecological and cultural destruction. A systemic educational
program that provides a wholistic assessment of farming enterprises and utilizes existing cases to
exemplify the proper benefit-generating agritourism form can support this original cause.
Food sovereignty is an empowering yet complex collective state to reach, and at it’s heart is the
building of a strong regional food economy as defined by Wiek (2020). Identifying sustainable
and exemplary regional economy players in a wide array of roles along the food system, and
creating accessible learning outputs rooted in their evidence-based practices allows for the
strengthening of the regional food economy through increased awareness, understanding,
resources, and tools among farmers and communities. It is in this context that the Farmer

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Agritourism Learning Community poses a valuable offering to the growing agritourism
opportunity space in Utuado, for the attaining of long-term socio-economic resilience and food
sovereignty.

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Appendix 1

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Increasing Socio-economic Resilience of Utuado Farmers through Agritourism

Appendix 2
Reconstructed Transition Pathway of Finca Amasar

(Forrest & Wiek, 2014)

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