The documents, the sworn testimony, and the law — organized so you can read them yourself and reach your own conclusion.
In 2011 the Virgin Islands Legislature passed the Farmer’s, Fishermen and Consumers Assistance Act and defined what a farm may do: grow, process, manufacture — and welcome visitors for farm tours and farm food events. Prosperity Farm has held its license from the Department of Licensing and Consumer Affairs since 2018, renewed every year, and built exactly the enterprise the Act describes. The Department now says nearly all of it required other licenses. That dispute is before the Superior Court of the Virgin Islands. Everything in Parts I through V is a public document or sworn testimony. We ask one thing of every reader: don’t take our word for it — read the record.
I. The Timeline
2011 The Legislature enacts the Farmer’s, Fishermen and Consumers Assistance Act, 7 V.I.C. § 191 et seq.
2018 – 2026 DLCA licenses the farm and renews every year at the one-dollar fee 7 V.I.C. § 193 prescribes — most recently June 2026.
June – Nov 2025 DLCA issues citations against the farm’s tours and events.
July 16, 2025 DLCA’s Alcohol Control Unit approves all six of the farm’s spirit labels, in writing, for sale in the Territory.
Dec 2, 2025 Administrative hearing. Every witness is a government official; the farm’s counsel cross-examines each one.
July 30, 2026 Amended Decision and Order issued against the farm.
Aug 8, 2026 The farm moves for reconsideration.
Aug 13, 2026 Mark Gelband writes directly to Commissioner Hodge — copying the Governor, his Chief of Staff, and the Commissioners of Agriculture, Planning and Natural Resources, and Tourism — proposing one ninety-minute working session. DLCA’s General Counsel replies in three sentences: route communications through counsel. The proposal itself is never addressed. The farm’s counsel then renews the offer through that channel — “the olive branch of a working session.” [All three letters below.]
Sept 1, 2026 Reconsideration denied — in a single paragraph.
Sept 11, 2026 The farm petitions the Superior Court of the Virgin Islands for review.
Sept 12, 2026 The day after the filing, DLCA halts the farm’s public operations — without the court order 3 V.I.C. § 272(d) provides for.
II. The Documents
Every document below is a statute, a public record of the proceeding, or correspondence we authored or received. We publish them whole, because context is the first casualty of a licensing dispute.
1. The Farmer’s, Fishermen and Consumers Assistance Act of 2011
The Act defines a “person engaged in agriculture” to include “the production, manufacture, canning or processing of food products, or by-products” and “agritourism activities, to include farm tours, seminars, farm classes, field days or farm food events, and farm stays.” The full text of the Act is linked below.
Administrative hearing · December 2, 2025 · 145 pages
The complete sworn testimony of DLCA’s six witnesses — the Assistant Commissioner, the Director of Enforcement, two enforcement officers, and the Commissioners of Agriculture and of Planning and Natural Resources. The farm rests its case largely on what the Government’s own witnesses said; the excerpts in Part III below are quoted from this document, page and line.
The Decision under review: fines, a cease-and-desist, and a finding of willfulness. Read its “Findings of Fact” section alongside the transcript and note what Part IV below sets out: the Findings recite what witnesses said, the Opinion cites the testimony as its authority, and 7 V.I.C. § 193 — the exemption at the heart of the case — appears nowhere in its seventeen pages.
4. The Farm’s Motion for Reconsideration — and the Denial
Filed August 8, 2026 · denied September 1, 2026
Our response to the Decision, supported by a sworn declaration: the statutory arguments, the licensing history, and the defects in the citations and fines. The Department’s answer was one paragraph. Both are here.
Before any of this reached a courtroom’s door, the farm proposed a different path: one ninety-minute working session with DLCA’s leadership and counsel and the Commissioners of Agriculture, Planning and Natural Resources, and Tourism, to answer a single question — “How can we find a workable path together for a Virgin Islands farm that grows food, adds value to what it grows, processes what it cannot sell fresh, and brings visitors onto the land?” The letter offered to host the session at the farm and offered Prosperity as the demonstration project the 2011 Legislature envisioned.
From Geraldine P. Vaval, Esq., General Counsel, DLCA · August 26, 2026
The Department’s answer to the letter above, in full: three sentences. Because the farm has retained counsel, “all communications should come through him” — “[k]indly refrain from contacting us directly.” The proposal — a working session of four departments to find a workable path — was not addressed. The farm asked for a table; the answer was a channel. We publish the reply whole so no one has to take our characterization of it.
From Kevin A. Rames, Esq. to Commissioner Hodge and General Counsel Vaval · August 27, 2026
Told to communicate through counsel, the farm did exactly that. Attorney Rames wrote to the Commissioner and the General Counsel renewing the proposal through the channel the Department chose — extending, in his words, “the olive branch of a working session, at the earliest time and at a location of our mutual convenience, during which we can exchange creative ideas and seek lasting solutions.” DLCA did not reply.
8. The Petition for Review — Superior Court of the Virgin Islands
Filed September 11, 2026
The farm’s petition asking a court to do what the administrative process never did: read the statutes and say what they mean. It assigns error to the absence of findings, the substitution of testimony for law, the unread exemption, the uncharged zoning theory, the unidentifiable violation, and the fines — each anchored to the transcript and the Decision’s own pages.
III. What the Government’s Own Witnesses Said, Under Oath
Every witness at the December 2 hearing was a government official, called by DLCA. What follows is quoted verbatim from the certified transcript, cited by page and line. Nothing is paraphrased inside quotation marks.
Does a farm need additional licenses for farm tours?
“…there would be no additional licenses needed for a farm tour.”
— Horace W. Graham, Jr., Assistant Commissioner, DLCA. Tr. 37:17–20
“The agriculture code does permit farm tours.”
— Wilbur Francis, Jr., Director of Enforcement, DLCA. Tr. 83:14
Is agritourism covered by the farmer’s license?
“The act does not make reference to any specific permits needed for agritourism. … [I]f you operate as a farm, agritourism would be one such activity approved under your farmer’s license.”
— Louis E. Petersen, Jr., Commissioner of Agriculture — on DLCA’s own direct examination. Tr. 65:1–5
Is music at a farm food event against any law?
Q. …is there anything inherently illegal as far as you’re concerned with those two things being placed together?
A. “I’m not aware of any legal prohibition against those two things coming together.”
— Commissioner Petersen. Tr. 70:2–7. He also testified he has attended farm food events with music and knows of no farm ever cited for it. Tr. 68:14–20
Q. Is there anything here that prohibits musical entertainment as part of a farm food event?
A. “The fact that other — that licenses occur or exists or activities that are — that would fall under that musical entertainment and other types of engagements.”
— Assistant Commissioner Graham, asked for a prohibition, citing none. Tr. 34:12–35:3
What makes a cane farm different from a mango farm?
Q. [What differentiates a cane farm’s product from a mango farm’s?]
A. “No, there is nothing.”
— Commissioner Petersen. Tr. 68:7–11
Asked whether he would cite a mango farm for selling its own mangoes on the farm: “under this, no. No.”
— Assistant Commissioner Graham. Tr. 38:3–5. Officer Gumbs, same question: “You did not [violate the law].” Tr. 103:24–104:1
Does the farm’s exemption exist?
“[T]here are no exemptions allowing additional activities under a commercial farming license alone.”
— Assistant Commissioner Graham, as the Decision itself records his testimony. Decision, p. 3
The exemption is printed in the Virgin Islands Code at 7 V.I.C. § 193 — and DLCA applies it every time it bills this farm the one-dollar fee that section prescribes, as it has every year since 2018. The Department’s general fee schedule, 27 V.I.C. § 302, runs from $10 to $3,000 and contains no one-dollar entry.
Who decided what the law means?
“[L]aw is not really law until … it’s interpreted by a court.” The Department’s position is one “we hold, I hold, and through our deliberations with our team, we hold.”
— Assistant Commissioner Graham. Tr. 39:16–17; 40:4–6
“This is an interpretation from the Division of Enforcement,” enforced “[t]hrough an extension of my officers.” And: “[Y]es, I do think that reasonable people may not be clear or full in their understanding.”
— Director Francis. Tr. 88:13–17; 89:12–14
“[I]t’s not the place for the department to interpret what certain things say.” The zoning Table “is inadequate to encompass the full definition of commercial agriculture” — “Yes, I can see that” — and his own department has submitted an amendment to the Legislature to cure it.
— Jean-Pierre L. Oriol, Commissioner, DPNR. Tr. 58:2–3; 59:12–15; 56:4–13
IV. What Went Wrong: A Plain-Language Summary
These are the principal legal defects the farm has asked the Superior Court to review. Each one is verifiable from the two documents above — the transcript and the Decision — without taking anyone’s word for anything.
The “Findings of Fact” contain no findings.
The section is a witness-by-witness recital of what six officials said — “According to Graham,” “Petersen explained,” “Francis concluded” — in which the hearing officer never resolves a disputed question or states a single fact in her own voice. A decision with no findings gives a reviewing court nothing to review, and gives the farm no way to know what was actually decided, or why.
Testimony was substituted for law.
What a statute means is a question of law for a tribunal — not something a witness can testify to, least of all officials of the department prosecuting the case. Here the Decision’s dispositive sentence begins, “As Graham, Oriol, and Petersen testified, the statute does not…” The rule of decision came from the witness stand.
An “including but not limited to” list was read as a closed list.
7 V.I.C. § 192(a) defines a person engaged in agriculture through an expressly illustrative list — including “the production, manufacture, canning or processing of food products, or by-products” and “agritourism activities, to include farm tours, seminars, farm classes, field days or farm food events, and farm stays.” The Decision treats the list as exhaustive and the named activities as unlicensed — citing a farm for farm tours and farm food events, words the statute itself uses.
The exemption at the heart of the case was never read.
7 V.I.C. § 193 exempts a person engaged in agriculture from license fees, substituting a one-dollar fee payable to DLCA. It appears nowhere in the Decision’s seventeen pages. Its only treatment in the entire proceeding was the Assistant Commissioner’s testimony that no such exemption exists — while his Department billed, and cashed, the one-dollar fee that only § 193 prescribes.
Three witnesses supplied three different made-up tests — and none could cite a source.
One officer disqualified the farm’s event for “live entertain[ment],” another because it was “a farming event with alcohol,” and the Assistant Commissioner because music is not “mentioned” in the statute. Neither music, entertainment, nor alcohol appears anywhere in § 192 as a disqualifier. A rule that exists nowhere in statute or regulation cannot be enforced against a licensee who had no way to know it existed.
A zoning theory no one charged, from a witness who disclaimed the subject.
The citations charged unlicensed activity, not zoning. The Decision nonetheless holds the farm’s activities inconsistent with A-1 zoning — on the testimony of a witness who said that he lacked knowledge of the 2011 Act, that interpretation is “not the place” of his department, and that the zoning Table is “inadequate.” No witness was ever asked about 29 V.I.C. § 225 — the provision that permits agricultural processing on farmland and excludes only one kind of distillation from it, by name: rum distillation. The farm makes no rum, and DLCA’s own Alcohol Control Unit approved its six products in writing as gins, liqueurs, a dram, and an amaro.
The Decision contradicts the record it sits on.
Both sustained citations rest in part on observations their issuing officer never testified to. The word “willful” appears once in 145 transcript pages — in the prosecutor’s closing argument, not in any testimony. The Order bars “hosting live entertainment events” after the only live-entertainment citation was dismissed for insufficient evidence — and after the Decision itself credited testimony that background music at a farm-product event “is not outside the Act.” The fines match no figure in the record.
The enforcement outran the statute.
3 V.I.C. § 272(d) provides that a DLCA cease-and-desist order is put into effect by application to the court, and makes noncompliance with the resulting judicial order contempt. No such application has been made, to the farm’s knowledge, and no court has ordered any part of this farm closed. The question of what the law permits is now where the Assistant Commissioner himself said law is made real: in front of a court.
V. The Law Itself
7 V.I.C. § 192(a)(7)–(8) — a person engaged in agriculture includes, “but not limited to”:
“the production, manufacture, canning or processing of food products, or by-products”“agritourism activities, to include farm tours, seminars, farm classes, field days or farm food events, and farm stays”
7 V.I.C. § 193 — exemption from license fees for agriculture:
“…provided, however, that he shall be required to pay a one dollar fee to the Department of Licensing and Consumer Affairs for the purpose of doing business in the Territory.”
29 V.I.C. § 225 — agricultural processing, permitted on farmland:
“A facility designed for the primary or complete processing of agricultural products … but not including commercial slaughtering of animals or rum distillation.”
3 V.I.C. § 272(d)(3)–(4) — how a DLCA cease-and-desist is enforced:
The Department “may apply” to the court “requesting that any cease and desist order issued by it or any corrective order be put into effect”; “[n]oncompliance with a judicial order granted at the Department’s request shall constitute contempt of court.”
VI. The Argument
Parts I through V set out the record. This part is argument: a presentation on what the 2011 Act says, why it matters to the Territory’s food supply, and what following it would build.
A FOOD-SECURITY AND ECONOMIC STRATEGY GROUNDED IN EXISTING VIRGIN ISLANDS LAW
The Law Is Already Written.Now Let It Work.
In 2011, the Legislature of the Virgin Islands wrote agritourism into the very definition of agriculture — inside an Act named for farmers, fishermen, and consumers. Reading it to the full extent of its words is the point.
Feed the Territory ·Fund the farm ·Keep land in production ·Welcome the world to it
Agritourism Under the 2011 Farmer’s, Fishermen and Consumers Assistance Act · 7 V.I.C. §§ 191–1981
THE LEGAL ARGUMENT
Follow the Law as It Is Written
Four textual commands in § 192
“including but not limited to” — the opening clause makes the eight categories a floor, never a ceiling; activities of the same kind qualify
“wholly or partially derived” — no income cap: hospitality revenue may grow to sustain the whole farm without disqualifying it
“to include” in (a)(8) — the agritourism list itself is illustrative; “farm food events” and “farm stays” are categories, not one-off exceptions
fishing and aquaculture sit INSIDE the definition — § 192(a)(4) and (6) make the sea part of our agriculture, a reach no mainland statute matches
Purpose confirms text
This is a remedial assistance statute for farmers, fishermen and consumers. Remedial statutes are construed generously to achieve their purpose — and its purpose, on its face, is farm viability and the food supply of the Territory.
The DLCA reading defeats the Act
Read (a)(8) the way DLCA has and a farmer may give a tour but not pour a tasting; cook a “farm food event” once but not run a farm kitchen; host a field day but not a wedding under the same tent. No canon of construction requires an absurdity the Legislature never wrote.
Obeying the law costs nothing; DLCA “interpretation” harms
Every benefit under the Act still flows only to CERTIFIED operators on property devoted to agriculture (§§ 192(b), 195). The Act’s generosity is in what a real farm may do — not in who counts as a farm. Fees and refusals the statute never authorized are not caution; they are unlegislated policy.
Agritourism Under the 2011 Farmer’s, Fishermen and Consumers Assistance Act · 7 V.I.C. §§ 191–1982
THE 2011 ACT
Our Legislature Already Made This Policy Choice
Read the title: the Farmer’s, Fishermen and Consumers Assistance Act(Act No. 7333,Dec. 15, 2011). The Legislature named three beneficiaries — and the third is every Virgin Islander who eats. Food security is not being read into this Act. It is written on its face.
1
It defined agriculture openly
§ 192(a): income “wholly or partially derived” from fishing or food production, “including but not limited to” eight categories — an expansive definition by deliberate design.
2
It put agritourism inside
§ 192(a)(8) names agritourism — farm tours, seminars, classes, field days, farm food events, farm stays — as agriculture itself, not a sideline needing separate permission.
3
It attached real benefits
§ 193 exempts every person engaged in agriculture from franchise taxes and license fees arising from the operation — replaced by a $1 DLCA fee — plus excise-tax exemption on materials and equipment; § 196 refunds; § 197 subsidies.
4
It ordered implementation
§ 194 commands the Commissioner of Agriculture to issue implementing rules — with the Governor, Finance, and Internal Revenue. The tool to give the Act its full effect already exists; it has simply never been fully used.
The question before us is not whether to adopt an agritourism policy. It is whether to honor the one the 29th Legislature already enacted.
Agritourism Under the 2011 Farmer’s, Fishermen and Consumers Assistance Act · 7 V.I.C. §§ 191–1983
TWO CLAUSES THE SKEPTICS KEEP MISSING
Value-Added Is Agriculture. And the License Costs One Dollar.
§ 192(a)(7) — the value-added clause
“the production, manufacture, canning or processing of food products, or by-products”
Manufacturing and processing farm product into value-added goods is not adjacent to agriculture in this Territory — it IS agriculture, verbatim, in the definition
The jam, the hot sauce, the roasted coffee, the chocolate, the spirits — and even by-products (soaps, feeds, botanicals) — all sit inside § 192
So the room where those products are made, poured and sold is part of the agriculture operation (§ 192(c)) — the legal foundation under every tasting room and farm store
§ 193 — the exemption clause
Every person engaged in agriculture “shall be exempt from payment to the Government of the Virgin Islands of…”
(a) trade and excise taxes on building materials, supplies, equipment and implements used in the agriculture operation — the kitchen build-out, the coolers, the tasting bar
(b) franchise taxes and LICENSE FEES “directly related to and arising from his agriculture operations”
In place of those fees: a ONE DOLLAR fee to DLCA to do business in the Territory (only automobile license fees are carved out)
Follow the chain: § 192 makes the farmstand, the farm store, the cafe, the tasting room part of the agriculture operation → § 193(b) exempts the license fees arising from that operation → the certified farmer’s license for each of those activities costs one dollar. The license itself may still be required — health and safety review is untouched — but the FEE barrier the Government charges everyone else was removed for farmers in 2011. Charging a certified farm full retail, restaurant or tasting-room license fees isn’t caution; it’s a failure to apply the statute as written.
§ 193 text: V.I. Code tit. 7, § 193 (Justia); benefits also summarized by the V.I. Dep’t of Agriculture (gross-receipts exemption, up-to-90% income-tax subsidy, 95% farmland property-tax credit).
Agritourism Under the 2011 Farmer’s, Fishermen and Consumers Assistance Act · 7 V.I.C. §§ 191–1984
FROM WORDS TO LIVELIHOODS
Straight from USVI § 192
The activityWhere § 192 already covers itWhat implementation takes
Farm & sea tours, classes, field days§ 192(a)(8), verbatimAlready the law — certify and go
Farm stays & guest lodging§ 192(a)(8) “farm stays,” verbatimAlready the law — certify and go
Tasting rooms for farm-made goods(a)(7) manufacture & processing + (a)(8) tours & seminars — the products are agriculture; the tasting is agricultural education§ 194 rule; license fee exempt per § 193 ($1 DLCA); align beverage licensing for spirits & craft
Farm cafe / farm-to-table dining(a)(8) “farm food events,” read as the category it is§ 194 rule with Territory-sourcing expectations; license fee exempt per § 193
Farm store: our products + our neighbors’(a)(7) manufacture & processing + the open definition — making and marketing farm products IS farming§ 194 rule; local-product floor; license fee exempt per § 193 ($1 DLCA)
Weddings & celebrations, farm-catered(a)(8) “farm food events” + the open definition — 150 guests fed from our fields is a farm food event by any honest readingConfirm by rule now; add an express events safe harbor in statute for certainty
Charter-to-table & dock dinners(a)(4) fishing + (a)(6) aquaculture are agriculture in this TerritoryConfirm by § 194 rule with DPNR licensing
Agritourism Under the 2011 Farmer’s, Fishermen and Consumers Assistance Act · 7 V.I.C. §§ 191–1985
ANSWERING THE SKEPTICS
§ 192 Is Not Boundless — the Act Polices Itself
Only real farms qualify
§ 192(b) protects “property devoted to agriculture” — real property PRIMARILY USED in the business of farming. A venue with a garnish garden is not a farm under this Act, and no reading of it makes it one.
Certification is the gate
§ 195 requires certification before any benefit flows; § 193 exemptions attach to certified persons only. The Commissioner decides who is farming — the range of permitted activity never widens who qualifies.
Rules can carry conditions
§ 194 rulemaking can set Territory-sourcing floors for cafes and events, event-safety plans, and decertification for operations that quit producing — the North Carolina clawback, done our way.
The Legislature stays informed
§ 198 requires annual reporting — a built-in review so the program is measured, adjusted, and defended with data, not anecdotes.
The honest answer to “won’t everyone claim to be a farm?”: the Act draws the line at who is farming, not at what a real farm may offer its guests.
Agritourism Under the 2011 Farmer’s, Fishermen and Consumers Assistance Act · 7 V.I.C. §§ 191–1986
WHY THIS MATTERS NOW
Almost Every Bite of Food Arrives in a Shipping Container
~98%of the food consumed in the Virgin Islands is imported — and so are roughly 97% of the inputs our farmers need to grow food
2back-to-back Category 5 hurricanes (Irma & Maria, 2017) showed what happens when the import chain breaks: slow recovery, scarce fresh food
$3.3Mtotal territorial farm-gate sales (2018 Census of Agriculture) — a production base too small and too under-capitalized to feed us, on its current economics
Farming here fails for one reason above all: the economics. Land, water, labor and freight all cost more on islands, while a farmer selling produce alone captures the smallest margin in the food chain. Researchers document “little to no value-added processing” in the Territory and few incentives to start food businesses. Agritourism is how small farms everywhere have solved this exact problem — the visitor pays resort prices for the farm experience, and that revenue keeps the farm farming. We do not lack the visitors. We host millions. What we lack is the bridge between them and our farms — and the bridge is already in our law.
Sources: 2021 V.I. Agricultural Plan; UN FAO; USDA Census of Agriculture (V.I.); J. Agric., Food Systems & Community Dev. (2024), “Food Insecurity in Paradise.”
Agritourism Under the 2011 Farmer’s, Fishermen and Consumers Assistance Act · 7 V.I.C. §§ 191–1987
THE CONSUMER’S STAKE
Agritourism IS Food Security
Revenue keeps land in production
A farm earning visitor income survives drought years, input spikes, and storm seasons that would otherwise end it. Nationally, agritourism operators average $44,000 in added gross revenue — on St. Croix or St. Thomas, that is the difference between a working farm and a for-sale sign. No farms, no local food.
Visitors finance the missing food infrastructure
Researchers document “little to no value-added processing” in the Territory. Tasting rooms, farm kitchens and farm stores justify exactly what local food needs anyway: certified kitchens, cold storage, packaging — built for guests, used year-round to feed residents.
Import substitution, meal by meal
A farm-catered wedding of 150 is 150 plates of Territory-grown food replacing imports — at the highest margin agriculture can earn. VI Farmers Alliance leadership testifies that rebuilding local food can recapture “hundreds of millions” now leaking out of the Territory to imports.
The sea is in the statute
§ 192(a)(4) and (6) put fishing and aquaculture inside agriculture. Charter-to-table and dock-dinner experiences turn our fishers into the same certified, visitor-funded, resilient food producers — a blue-food advantage no mainland state can copy.
Resilience when the boats stop
Irma and Maria proved the import chain fails precisely when we need it most. Every farm and fishery that agritourism keeps solvent is standing capacity the day after the next storm — food security is not a warehouse, it is working producers.
Consumers are in the Act’s title
Certification-linked benefits can carry local-sourcing expectations — farm cafes and event caterers anchored to Territory-grown ingredients — so every visitor dollar pulls the local food system forward. That is the “Consumers Assistance” the Act promises.
Agritourism Under the 2011 Farmer’s, Fishermen and Consumers Assistance Act · 7 V.I.C. §§ 191–1988
THE ECONOMIC EVIDENCE
This Model Builds Real Economies
$1.26BU.S. farm income from agritourism in 2022, up 12.4% in real terms since 2017 — measured on a census line that doesn’t even count events, dining or retail (USDA)
1 in 7jobs in Napa County supported by its farm-anchored visitor economy — $2.2B in spending, $294M in state & local taxes (2025 study)
2.7Mrecord Kentucky Bourbon Trail visits in 2024; visitors spend $400–$1,200 per trip and stay 3.2 days — farm-and-craft tourism at territorial scale
25 certified farms at the U.S. per-farm average (~$44K) ≈ $1.1M/yr — about a THIRD of the Territory’s entire 2018 farm-gate sales, before any multiplier
USDA research: agritourism earnings concentrate on specialty-crop farms near visitor populations and natural amenities — a description of the Virgin Islands
Millions of cruise and resort guests already land here; no jurisdiction on the chart had to build its audience first — we start with ours
Figures as reported by USDA ERS/NASS, NERCRD, Kentucky Distillers’ Assoc., Visit Napa Valley, Va. Tech & Va. Wine Board studies; methods differ and are not additive.
Agritourism Under the 2011 Farmer’s, Fishermen and Consumers Assistance Act · 7 V.I.C. §§ 191–1989
CORROBORATION
Every Authority on Agritourism Reads It Our Way
USDA (ERS / Nat’l Ag Library)
Agritourism = on-farm services for recreation, hospitality, or entertainment; a venture linking production and/or processing with tourism. The census line itself names “farm or wine tours.”
National Agricultural Law Center
Four factors — tourism + agriculture, public visitors, entertainment or education, income. Our § 192 satisfies all four on its face; the Center’s 50-state survey shows expansive definitions are the national norm.
NAFDMA (the industry’s association)
Visitors “experience a connection with agriculture” through entertainment, education, and/or the purchase of farm products — the farm store is agritourism itself.
Univ. of Vermont multi-state framework
The academic consensus model puts farm stays, tours, classes, farm-to-table dinners and TASTINGS in the CORE of agritourism — precisely the activities § 192(a)(8) names.
The U.S. Congress (pending AGRITOURISM Act)
Congress’s own findings list distillery tours, farm dining, farm stays, direct sales — and “concerts and special events, culinary experiences, festivals, fairs… and weddings” — as agritourism.
New Jersey’s regulators
An agriculture department defined protected activities by rule — wine tastings classified as educational — using exactly the kind of rulemaking power our § 194 gives our Commissioner.
When the federal government, the leading legal center, the industry, and the academy all define agritourism this way, reading § 192 in full is not aggressive — it is ordinary.
Agritourism Under the 2011 Farmer’s, Fishermen and Consumers Assistance Act · 7 V.I.C. §§ 191–19810
THE PROOF ELSEWHERE
We Don’t Need Their Statutes. We Need Ours, Used.
Agritourism builds prosperity
Virginia protects “usual and customary activities and events” at farm wineries — weddings included — from local prohibition: a $2.2B agritourism economy, 22,000 jobs
North Carolina treats agritourism buildings — wedding barns included — as bona fide farm purposes on objective farm-status tests
Kentucky matched an expansive agritourism statute with modern tasting, cocktail and satellite-room rights — a record 2.7M Bourbon Trail visits followed
Notice what these have in common with § 192: generous activity rights tied to REAL farm status — exactly our Act’s structure of certification + open definition
Restrictions export the harvest — and the business
Napa County’s 1990 ordinance reduced wineries to “processing facilities” and banned weddings at nearly all of them
The result: a ~$196M events line pushed off wineries and next door — planners openly “must travel to Sonoma County” to book
Today Napa vintners call their county a “Department of Sales Prevention” amid falling wine demand and enforcement litigation
For a small territory like ours, the warning is existential: restrict our Act by “interpretation” and the boats, the couples, and the dollars simply sail past our farms to someone else’s island
The mainland spent thirty years proving what works. Our Legislature wrote the working formula into law in 2011. The only step left is implementation.
Agritourism Under the 2011 Farmer’s, Fishermen and Consumers Assistance Act · 7 V.I.C. §§ 191–19811
FARMERS. FISHERMEN. CONSUMERS.
The Act named all three of us.Following the law serves us all.
Every tasting poured, every farm meal served, every celebration catered from our fields and our waters is revenue that keeps a Virgin Islands farm farming and a fisher fishing — and every farm kept working is food security the next storm cannot sink. The Legislature gave us this tool in 2011. Let’s use every word of it.
7 V.I.C. §§ 191–198 ·Act No. 7333 (2011) ·“including but not limited to”
Agritourism Under the 2011 Farmer’s, Fishermen and Consumers Assistance Act · 7 V.I.C. §§ 191–19812
Transcript citations are page:line. Quotations from the transcript reproduce it as certified, including its typographical errors. This page states the farm’s position in pending litigation; the documents are published so readers can test that position against the record.
