Preserving Farmland Through Agri-tourism?

As small farmers try to survive during troubled times, some farmers are switching from big commodity crops to a new world of corn mazes, U-pick pumpkin patches, farm stands and espresso machines. It's a newer concept in the American West, though in Europe and in parts of the American East the concept of harvesting the tourist trade to keep farmers in business is well established. In Washington State, where a number of family farms have set up shop, planners have yet to develop standard templates on how to deal with retail businesses on farms, leaving them trying to adapt rules that were written more to accommodate suburban Wal-Marts than to handle traffic around a farm stand.