Abstract:
Agrotourism is which is also known as a type of rural tourism. Many parts of Sri
Lanka are still didn’t attained that much of urbanism therefore, those areas acting
as preserving grounds for the rural agricultural characteristics. Couple agriculture
with the tourism as an Agri - entrepreneurial sector, an alternative tourism sector
which could be a strategical method to involve more women and youth in to
agricultural area in the Southern province in order to improve their livelihood in a
sustainable manner. This study carried out based on the grounded theory method
since the research work was a social study which have been done thorough focused
interviews with the 50 small-scale farmers and fishermen and 20 surrounding
community people in Dikkubura weekend farm and paddy cultivation, Stilt fishing
at Koggala and Home Gardening and fishing village at Kahandamodara. A
questioner was performed by 20 local and foreign visitors to Sri Lanka. The feeding
grounds of the research were selected for reason of practicing ecological
agriculture. As the parameters View on community based agrotourism by farmers
and fishermen, View on economic, social and environmental impacts of community
based agrotourism by the community, Knowledge about the agrotourism,
expectations from the agrotourism by tourists were measured. Participants were
had positive perceptions regarding the impact of agrotourism on economy than its
negative with higher difference where social and environmental impacts also
showed positive but with minor difference than the negative. The interviews were
coded and a theory was derived and it was concluded that there is a generation of
conflict between government and community regarding agro tourism
establishment though it had huge potentials.
