Besieged parks and cash-strapped farmers benefit from the growing trend of commercial campgrounds on agricultural land.
On any given summer day, Lane Southern Orchards is crawling with visitors. The 118-year-old peach and pecan farm located 30 minutes outside of Macon, Georgia, is an agrotourism Shangri-la, featuring tractor rides, u-pick berry patches, and, of course, more peach cobbler than you can shake a Reddi-wip can at. Inside the farm’s roadside market — a gleaming, freon-blasted giftshop — guests stuff their carts with regional delicacies like chowchow, muscadine preserves, and papery Vidalia onions.
But during the cold months, according to marketing director Wendy Barton, even Lane Southern, the largest peach grower in the state, grows quiet. No whir of a soft-serve machine, no kids cheesing atop the retired tractors out front.
“Winter has always been a really slow time for us,” Barton said. “Historically, our books would be in the red.”
A few years ago, Barton went looking for ways to maintain revenue during the off-season and stumbled upon Harvest Hosts, a membership program for RV travelers. Instead of squeezing into a conventional, congested campground, Harvest Hosts members can boondock at farms, vineyards, or breweries; in lieu of a site fee, guests are required to make a minimum purchase of $30 from the business where they’re bunking — a bottle of wine, a bag of apples, maybe a gunny sack of pecans. (The host can charge a small fee for electricity or water hook-ups.)
Since Lane Southern Orchards became a Harvest Hosts site in 2024, its once-empty January parking lot is filled with visitors to the nearby Georgia National Fairgrounds or Ocmulgee Mounds National Historic Site. It’s a decision Barton said has made a meaningful difference for the operation’s finances and increased the farm’s visibility. Overhead costs are nonexistent and the marketing is free, she noted. “It’s ideal for the guest and for the farm.”
It’s also ideal for underfunded, overcrowded public lands and the scores of Americans looking to get outdoors. According to an industry report, more than 53 percent of campers nationwide had trouble finding an available campsite in 2025. Five years earlier, that number was only 11 percent.
Increasingly, these stymied campers are turning to farms like Lane Southern Orchards that are opening up their parking lots, unused pastures, and extra outbuildings to travelers looking for wide-open spaces.
According to an industry report, more than 53 percent of campers nationwide had trouble finding an available campsite in 2025.
“More people than ever before are getting outside, but the infrastructure to support that demand is just not there,” said Cassandra Prenn-Vasilakis, senior manager of government and community relations at Hipcamp, an outdoor booking site. “Farmers are able to fill that need while generating sustainable revenue, especially at times of the year when their margins might be particularly narrow.”
A growing number of online platforms (Hipcamp, Harvest Hosts, The Dyrt, and Farmstay, to name a few) now offer RV sites, tent camping, and glamping on working farms and ranches, most with a traditional pay-to-stay model. Additionally, Prenn-Vasilakis said communities around the country have begun adopting policies to create a legal framework for these small-scale campgrounds.
One of those communities is Chaffee County, Colorado, where the highest concentration of 14,000-foot peaks and the most commercially rafted stretch of river in the U.S. — not to mention miles and miles of bike trails and fishing streams — has made it a destination for recreation enthusiasts and second-home owners, especially since the pandemic. According to Miles Cottom, the county’s community planning and natural resources director, the explosive growth has placed a significant strain on public utilities, public land, and the area’s farmers.
“Ranchers have had to move calving operations because somebody put in a subdivision next door, they’ve had to fence off portions of their property because there’s more traffic on roads where there was rarely, rarely traffic before,” Cottom says. “It’s death by a thousand cuts.”
A few years ago, in a bid to protect the overrun backcountry while creating new revenue streams for farmers and ranchers, the county began to consider a permitting process that would allow landowners to host low-impact campgrounds (up to five campsites on 100 acres or 10 sites on larger parcels).
“On a weekend in California, you cannot, on a whim, just decide you want to take your family camping.”
Regulations for the first-of-its-kind “commercial camping on private land ordinance,” as it came to be known, were crafted with input from groups like the Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Trust, the U.S. Forest Service, and local recreation outfitters. When it was adopted at the end of 2024, more than 250 Chaffee County landowners became eligible to apply for a permit, and now stand to make anywhere from $5 thousand to $25 thousand in additional income, according to internal data provided by Hipcamp, which advocated for the legislation.
It’s too early to evaluate the impact of the ordinance, said Cottom, but a handful of ranchers have applied for or already received the permit and are now busy designing their campgrounds.
Officials in California are also eagerly anticipating the outcome of the state’s recently passed Low-Impact Camping Areas Act, which allows property owners to host small camping areas of nine sites or fewer (four for RV sites). According to Ben Friedman, director of government affairs at Save the Redwoods League, an organization that supported the legislation, more camping options not only benefit the communities adjacent to popular parks, but also the many residents who have often been excluded from enjoying the state’s iconic landscapes.
“On a weekend in California, you cannot, on a whim, just decide you want to take your family camping,” Friedman said. “You have to be in the permitting system months in advance when it opens at 6am with your dates ready. You have to have the fastest mouse finger. It’s far from an equitable system.” Other Californians are deterred by “apocalyptic” overcrowding and miles-long entrance lines, as the National Park Service does away with its timed reservation system this summer.
More camping options also puts the outdoors in reach for more people, including those new to camping or families with small children and limited travel budgets.
The real value of her campsites are the relationships they allow her to build with locals who might return for another campout.
Farmer Rebecca Schwendler, who since 2023 has hosted three campsites on Ancient Spring Farm, her 25-property diversified farm in Snow Camp, North Carolina, said the majority of her guests come from the nearby cities of Raleigh, Durham, and Greensboro. While the income she earns is “a nice bonus,” she said the real value of her campsites are the relationships they allow her to build with locals who might return for another campout, come back to purchase produce, or take one of the mead-making or chicken-keeping workshops Schwendler offers throughout the year.
The grind can be draining, she admits, and warns potential farmer-hosts to set firm boundaries with their guests about booking windows and check-in times. “Be realistic that people are going to show up and not know you’re working an 18-hour day,” said Schwendler. While the vast majority of her guests have been a delight, “there have been a few not nice, not considerate people.”
Still, the benefits of hosting campers far outweigh the drawbacks for Schwendler, both on a personal level and an ideological one. “It gets people out on the land to appreciate how much work goes into farming,” she said. “That brings me a lot of joy.”
More than the revenue, for most farmers, this is what it’s all about, according to Hipcamp’s Prenn-Vasilakis: “Creating touch points between the next generation of farmers and consumers with agricultural land and lifestyles,” she said. “Whether you’re a two-acre farm or 80,000-acre cattle ranch, what folks have in common is the land and the desire to share it responsibly.”
