Role Of Local Food System In Advancing Sustainable Tourism Development And Community Resilience
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.64882/ijrt.v14.i1.1028Keywords:
Sustainable Tourism, Local Food Systems, Community Resilience, Cultural Heritage, Rural Development, Food-Based Tourism.Abstract
Sustainable tourism is also more focused on the incorporation of the local resources and the involvement of the local around the site to ensure that economic, cultural and environmental development is balanced. This paper discusses how local food systems can contribute towards the development of sustainable tourism and resilience of communities. It used a descriptive design and the primary data was gathered on 200 respondents in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India, who were the local residents, farmers, food vendors, tourism entrepreneur, and tourists, through a structured questionnaire and convenience sampling method. Frequency and percentage were the tools used to analyze the data. The results demonstrate the high degree of awareness of the significance of the local food systems in tourism as the majority of the respondents are aware of the way they contribute to the economic gains of the local producers, maintenance of the cultural traditions, and environmentally friendly practices. The findings also suggest that local food systems can play a major role in enhancing resilience within the community, through the provision of livelihood, improved local supply chains, and maintenance of local knowledge. Moreover, the stakeholders also came up with food festivals, farm-to-table tourism, the policy incentives to farmers, and the promotion of local cuisine on digital platforms as some of the effective methods of improving the visibility of the local food in tourism. The paper emphasizes the fact that the possibility to incorporate the local food systems into the development of tourism can foster sustainable development along with the well-being of communities and their socio-economic sustainability in the long-term.
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