Doug Patterson, Vice President, Patterson Farm

Invest: spoke with Doug Patterson, vice president of Patterson Farm, about how a challenging year for commodity agriculture is reshaping long-term strategy for family-owned operations. “Agritourism is up. Agritourism is growing,” Patterson said. He shared how that balance is helping sustain the fourth-generation farm while strengthening its role as both an agricultural producer and a regional destination.

What changes or trends are impacting Patterson Farm’s operations or growth trajectory?

This has not been a good year for most farmers across the country due to higher input costs and lower commodity prices. You’re probably seeing a lot of information coming out. The USDA has said that farm incomes were down considerably this past year. That was one reason why we started the agritourism business: to complement our farm. Our agritourism business is growing and can supplement our farming operation when needed, and of course, the farming operation supplements our agritourism business because we sell our fresh fruits and vegetables at our farm market and tours as well.

We are now a fourth-generation farm. We would like to continue this for many more years, but we’re having to diversify.

On the tourism side, what are visitors looking for today, and how has that changed over time?

There used to be a time when we had a predominantly pick-your-own operation, and people would come and pick large quantities of produce to take back home so they could can and freeze them and make jams and jellies. We’ve modified the experience based on our customers, who aren’t really doing that. They’re coming out here more for the experience of picking something, taking their pictures, and sharing those on social media. We have areas where our customers can bring their kids. They can take their pictures in front of certain props and video locations on our farm. Parents can watch their kids grow as they come back year after year after year.

One of the great things about our farm is that we’re authentic. We are a fourth-generation working farm, so when people come, there’s no telling what they might see because we still need to work and produce around the farm.

I think people want to connect with nature. They want to learn where their food comes from. We’re trying to create experiences where they can see those things and learn about agriculture.

As we’ve expanded in this area, we’ve also tried to create food experiences. We make our own ice cream here at the farm, made with our fresh strawberries or with whatever is in season — strawberries, blueberries, blackberries. Those have been some ways that we’ve expanded the offerings that we have here.

We’re also passionate about education, so we offer a lot of field trip experiences for school groups or any other groups that want to participate. Those programs start from March and run all the way through November. We offer different educational opportunities, from learning about dirt for third graders to being a farmer for the day, learning about strawberries and pumpkins. We work with educators to help reinforce lessons that children are learning in the classroom. It’s a different experience to be able to be out on the farm and actually see that lesson come to life.

How do your education programs help build awareness of agriculture careers and address the long-term workforce pipeline?

My wife, Michelle, started our educational tours. Her mother taught school for many years, so she has a deep passion for education. She’s tried to stay involved in the school system. She’s a member of the Rowan-Salisbury School CTE Committee and serves on the Rowan-Cabarrus Community College Board, so she’s passionate about showing children all the opportunities there are in agriculture. She developed an area we now call AgMagination, which is designed for children to explore different agriculture careers. We have seven or eight buildings so far, with many more to come. We have a dairy, a vet center, a farmer’s market, farm-to-table, and Ag mechanics. We’re trying to show people all the different career opportunities there are in agriculture.

There are so many different degrees. It’s mind-blowing how many different opportunities there are, especially when you think of all the different careers it takes to feed and provide clothing and shelter for people. And many of these jobs are high-tech now.

We’re not farming the way we used to because there are fewer farmers growing food on less land, and we’re trying to feed more people than we ever have before. So we’re having to use things like GPS technology and drones. There are just so many different ways that we’re embracing technology to grow more efficiently on the farm.

Agriculture is the No. 1 industry in North Carolina. If you take into account the feed and seed stores, the equipment companies, and the financial companies, agriculture is the No. 1 business. We’re trying to get more young people involved and encouraged because the average age of farmers continues to go up. I think the average farmer is now in their late 50s or early 60s. We’re trying to get young farmers encouraged and show them a way that they could have a path in agriculture.

How do you manage the balance between running a working farm and hosting visitors year-round?

Previously, I worked in industry and was not going to come back to the farm. To come back and bring my family as well as my brother’s family, we needed to come up with different ways to bring in more revenue, or to make it viable for two families to be strictly working on the farm full-time. We started with school tours, and it just grew from there: school tours to weekend activities. Then we built a market on the farm.

We all have our areas of responsibility. My brother does more of the farm work, the outside work, growing the products. I’m more in charge of the sales and shipping and marketing and administrative stuff. My wife, Michelle, is in charge of the farm market and tours, and she has a staff that works with her.

My brother’s wife, Nora, has a nursing background. We have about 200 workers on our farm in the summer, and she keeps up with their medical and insurance and all that stuff.

We all have certain responsibilities, and we have people working with us to ensure that we keep the place running. But not just running because we want to give our customers the best quality product and service that we can. So it does take a lot of planning and coordination between the different entities to make sure that everything gets achieved.

What does the next chapter of growth look like, particularly for agritourism?

We continue to evolve. We started with just school groups during the week, and then we evolved into doing a weekend festival in the spring and the fall. And then we thought, given all the work that it takes to do a weekend festival, why not just set it up so you can do one every weekend in the spring and the fall?

We also offer our own food. We offered food on the farm about two years ago, and we’re now preparing various foods for our customers. 

We have so many different ideas, and we’ve worked in partnership with Rowan County Tourism. We try to stay engaged with different organizations like NAFDMA, which is the North American Farmers Direct Marketing Association, and the North Carolina Agritourism Networking Association. We’re always trying to get new ideas and bring better experiences for our guests.

We’ve already planned a good number of activities for 2026 and beyond. We’re working on one-, three-, and five-year plans to try to keep growing all of the divisions, but I’m specifically talking about agritourism right now. We have lots of ideas, and we’re excited about what the future looks like.