User:Dthomsen8/sandbox/ATP-INDIA

The concept of an Agricultural Theme Park was conceived and mooted by N.K.Kurian, a true nature lover, an agriculturist, an award winning agricultural entrepreneur from Kerala, India and the Managing Director of MangoMeadows Agricultural Pleasure Land Pvt Ltd, the first Agricultural Theme Park in the world.

Kurian derived the concept of agricultural theme park out of his own sheer necessity and as he felt the situations demand for it.

Situation that demanded Mr N.K Kurian to develop the concept of agricultural theme park
In India, the farmers are not getting an income proportionate to the effort they are putting in farming. In almost all the cases the traders and intermediaries take all the profit and the farmers are left with no or minimum benefits. In many cases farmers suffer huge losses forcing them even to commit suicide.This is evident from the increase in the farmer suicide rates during the past few decades. The unpredicted climate changes result in loss of crop and distress to the farmer though the traders remain unhurt as they always sell the product at a higher rate than they get from the farmer. The pain and effort of the farmers are neither considered nor they rewarded adequately. As a farmer, N K Kurian came across many similar situations throughout his life and that made him think about a solution to fetch reasonable price to the commodities produced by the farmers. He understood that equipping the farmers to sell their produces directly to the end users by avoiding the intermediaries and facilitating them to have value added products is the only option to ensure better rewards to the farmers. He also felt the necessity of farmers raising some supplementary income other than through sale of farm produces or it's value addition but from other means or activities on the farm land.

What is an Agricultural theme park
According to N K Kurian, agricultural theme parks are parks that are made within an agricultural area or adjacent to an agricultural area mainly with an objective to give supplementary income to the farmer and to provide value addition for farm products. The main idea behind the agricultural theme park is to bring the buyer directly to the agricultural farm and to sell farm products directly to the buyer in a value added way without any intermediaries.

Advantages of creating agricultural theme parks
Agricultural theme park offers a wide range of facilities for entertainment, pleasure, health care, education and research along with the providing facilities to stay in the park in cottages and resorts. The theme of the park is set up in such a way as to emphasis visitors to participate in farming and farm related activities, giving them opportunity to experience traditional farm culture. All these activities and facilities that are provided in the agricultural theme park are actually meant for supporting the farmer and also for promoting sales of agricultural products. The value added farm products are sold through organic vegetable & fruit stores and are also served to visitors as prepared food through restaurants serving traditional, conventional, or modern dishes. The theme park also provides facilities for the visitors to pluck and cook vegetables from the farm which is also provided as a value added service.
 * Helps farmers to earn supplementary income from agricultural farm
 * Helps farmers to sell farm products in a value added way
 * More farmers will turn towards Organic farming and will stop using harmful insecticides and pesticides since they get better value for their Organic farm products
 * Bio diversity of the nature can be preserved.