Farm Tours

The ask

Run a curated agritourism operation connecting Dhaka's urban population — school groups, corporate offsites, foodie consumers — with working regenerative farms within two hours of the city, generating supplemental income for farmers and awareness for sustainable agriculture.

Why now

The experiential-tourism segment is the fastest-growing in BD's domestic travel market, and the government's "Rural Tourism" sub-policy (2022) actively encourages it. Post-pandemic, urban Bangladeshis with purchasing power have rediscovered day-trip travel; social media turns a well-framed farm visit into organic marketing. A cluster of regenerative farms around Gazipur, Manikganj, and Narsingdi is already producing for Dhaka markets — tours create an upsell on top of existing operations.

Why Bangladesh

Dhaka is one of the world's most densely urban cities; its 22 million residents have almost no contact with food production. The 50–120 km radius around Dhaka encompasses productive riverine farmland that is visually striking and easy to narrate. The CSR budgets of Dhaka's garment and banking sector make corporate agri-tours a reliable B2B anchor. School curriculum reforms (2023) include climate and food literacy — field trips are fundable through school budgets.

As a business

Revenue per tour: ৳800–1,500 per head for school groups, ৳2,500–4,000 for premium consumer/corporate experiences. Farms receive a per-head hosting fee (৳300–500) plus a direct sales opportunity (on-farm produce purchases). The tour operator keeps the margin. Repeat visits are low, but referral and institutional repeat (same school each year) are high.

Economics

Move the sliders to model your own farm-tour operation. Defaults are order-of-magnitude estimates — pressure-testing them is part of what a founder pitches us.

What ZEPH would back

We'd back a founder who has already run 20+ tours at break-even and wants capital to formalise the farm-partner network and build an institutional sales function. The prize here is less a unicorn than a durable, cash-flow-positive SME that anchors the broader regenerative food narrative in Bangladesh.

Impact

Farm tour operations generate direct supplementary income for regenerative farmers (estimated ৳20,000–60,000 per tour day), strengthening the economics of sustainable farming and reducing the financial pressure to convert to higher-chemical monoculture. At 12 tours per month with 25 people each, the operation keeps approximately US$35,000 per year in domestic experiential tourism spending local, creating 4–6 full-time-equivalent jobs in transport, guiding, and farm hosting. Each visitor exposed to regenerative practices represents a future consumer willing to pay a premium for sustainably produced food — a multiplier on the climate impact of the underlying farms.