Agritourism liability statutes by state

Most of the law that protects a farm open to visitors was not written for farms open to visitors. It was written for horses, or for hikers crossing private land, and it is being asked to cover a corn maze. Eight states in this research have gone further and passed a chapter about agritourism itself. This page explains what those eight chapters do, what they demand in return, and the large part of a farm day they leave entirely to your own paperwork. It is general information and not legal advice; take your own act and your own forms to a lawyer admitted where your gate is.

The bargain an agritourism act strikes

Each of these statutes makes the same trade. The legislature accepts that a working farm contains hazards that cannot be engineered away without destroying the thing visitors came for, declares those hazards to be inherent risks, and then removes the operator's liability for an injury caused by one of them. In exchange the operator has to tell people, in advance and in writing, that this is the deal.

Iowa states the reasoning in the act itself. Its chapter 673A opens with a legislative finding that an increasing number of Iowans are removed from day to day farm life, that farming includes a number of hazards which cannot be removed for the benefit of visitors without detracting from the farm experience, and that uncertainty about liability was holding the sector back. North Dakota's chapter 53-13 defines an inherent risk as any condition or danger integral to agritourism, listing surface and subsurface conditions of land and water, natural conditions of vegetation, the behaviour of wild or domestic animals, and structures and equipment ordinarily used in farming or ranching. It then adds a category the other acts handle more quietly: the potential of a participant to act negligently, including by failing to follow instructions.

So the visitor who trips on a rut, is knocked by a goat, or ignores a sign and climbs on a bale stack is, in principle, outside the claim. The visitor injured by something the farm did wrong is not.

Why the family is only eight states wide

Eight jurisdictions in this research carry a statute in this family: Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Minnesota, North Carolina, North Dakota and South Dakota. That is a small number beside the forty-five with an equine or farm animal act, and the reason is not that other states dislike farm tourism. It is that most of them already had two doctrines that reach the same ground and saw no need for a third.

The first is the farm animal activity act. Those chapters are drafted around the animal rather than the visit, and their definitions of a farm animal routinely reach cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, poultry and bees, which covers a great deal of what happens in a petting area or a milking demonstration. The second is the recreational use statute, which reduces or removes the duty a landowner owes to someone who comes on to the land for recreation. South Dakota is the clearest illustration of the overlap, because its agritourism provision is not a separate chapter at all. Sections 20-9-12 to 20-9-18 are a private land recreation statute, and the agritourism rule sits inside it at 20-9-16.1 as a way of restoring protection that charging admission would otherwise have removed. We were unable to retrieve the South Dakota text at source for this page, because the legislature's site serves its statutes through a script that defeats automated retrieval, so read that section yourself before relying on the description.

The practical consequence for an operator is that the absence of your state from the list underneath means very little on its own. It means only that the legislature filed the subject somewhere else.

Registration, and the states that make the immunity conditional

Only one of the eight makes you enrol before the protection exists, and it is worth describing precisely because it is commonly misremembered. North Dakota's chapter turns on the phrase registered agritourism operator. Section 53-13-02 lets a person become one by registering with the division of tourism, not with an agriculture agency, with a description of the activity provided or intended, at no fee, effective for five years. Sections 53-13-05 and 53-13-06 then give the assumption of risk defence and the liability limits to a registered operator. An unregistered North Dakota farm has the same claims against it as any other landowner.

Georgia is the ambiguous one. The warning its statute prescribes speaks of a registered agritourism activity at a registered agritourism location, and O.C.G.A. 51-3-31 takes the meaning of agritourism from a tax provision rather than defining it in place. This research did not retrieve a Georgia statute that creates the register itself, so we do not assert that one exists in the code; confirm it with the state agency before assuming you are inside the definition. Georgia also narrows the immunity in a way none of the others do. It runs only to a participant at least eighteen years of age, which on a farm full of school groups is a significant hole, and it requires both the posted sign and a signed waiver in matching words.

The warning text the legislature hands you

Five of the eight prescribe an exact sentence. Copying a neighbouring state's version is wrong on its face, because each names its own state and its own chapter inside the text.

Louisiana, R.S. 9:2795.5, on a sign in a clearly visible location at the entrance to the agritourism location and at the site of the activity, in black letters a minimum of one inch high:

WARNING Under Louisiana law, R.S. 9:2795.5, there is no liability for an injury to or death of a participant in an agritourism activity conducted at this agritourism location if such injury or death results from the inherent risks of the agritourism activity.

North Carolina, G.S. 99E-32, with the same placement and letter height, and the same words in clearly readable print in every written contract for professional services:

WARNING: Under North Carolina law, there is no liability for an injury to or death of a participant in an agritourism activity conducted at this agritourism location if such injury or death results from the inherent risks of the agritourism activity.

Indiana, Ind. Code 34-31-9-14, which is the only one in the family that spells out the participant's own carelessness inside the notice:

WARNING

Under Indiana law, an agritourism provider is not liable for an injury to, or the death of, a participant in agritourism activities at this location if the death or injury results from the inherent risks of agritourism activity. Inherent risks of agritourism activities include risks of injury inherent to land, equipment, and animals as well as the potential for you to act in a negligent manner that may contribute to your injury or death, or for other participants to act in a manner that may cause you injury or cause your death. You are assuming the risk of participating in this agritourism activity.

Georgia, O.C.G.A. 51-3-31, in black letters a minimum of one inch high at the main point of entry, and repeated in the waiver each adult visitor signs:

Warning: Under Georgia law, there is no liability for an injury or death of a participant at least 18 years of age in a registered agritourism activity conducted at this registered agritourism location if such injury or death results from the inherent risks of such agritourism activity.

Iowa abandons the formula entirely and writes a paragraph addressed to the visitor. Under section 673A.6 it goes in black letters a minimum of one inch high, in a conspicuous location where the visitor is first allowed to enter the premises, headed with the act's name and chapter number:

You are visiting a working farm as a participant who is either observing or contributing to the success of farming activities. Under Iowa law you are assuming liability for any hazard that you may encounter. A hazard includes the inherent risk of participating in a farming activity or disregarding written or verbal instructions. Farming includes dangerous conditions present on land and in structures, unpredictable behavior of farm animals, dangers associated with the operation of equipment and machinery, and potential wrongful acts of another visitor. Be careful.

The same words have to appear in any written contract and in any written waiver the visitor signs and dates, printed in twelve point boldface type, and the notice is not decoration: it is a condition of being able to plead the defence at all.

Two of the eight prescribe no wording. Minnesota's section 604A.40 requires plainly visible signs at one or more prominent locations that include a warning of the inherent risks, and leaves the sentence to you, while listing a failure to post among the circumstances in which liability survives. North Dakota's section 53-13-04 requires a conspicuous notice on the premises and in each written contract indicating that a registered operator is not liable for injury or death resulting from an inherent risk, again without fixing the words. For South Dakota we could not retrieve the statutory wording, and we are not going to reproduce a version of it we have not read at source.

Five ways the shield comes off

The exceptions are drafted into the statutes rather than left to the courts, and the same five recur.

The first is the operator's own fault. Minnesota keeps liability alive for negligence as well as for willful or wanton disregard that proximately causes injury, which is a wide opening. Iowa's section 673A.7 lifts the limitation where the act or omission was illegal, intentional, the result of willful misconduct, gross negligence or recklessness, or due to intoxication.

The second is the dangerous latent condition nobody was warned about. Iowa names a failure to notify a visitor of a dangerous latent condition on the farm, including in a building or structure or in equipment and machinery whether or not it was operational, where the condition was known or should have been known. North Dakota reaches the same result through a three part test: actual or constructive knowledge of a dangerous condition on the property, in equipment or in a particular animal, a failure to exercise ordinary care to remedy or warn, and a resulting injury.

The third is the animal with a history. Every act in the family singles out a known dangerous propensity of a particular animal, which is why the nip that everybody knew about is the claim these statutes do not stop.

The fourth is equipment and machinery. The visitor hurt by a quad, a trailer, a grain auger or a faulty gate is arguing about a machine rather than about the inherent character of a farm, and both Iowa and North Dakota list equipment separately from land and animals.

The fifth is the unexpected. Iowa adds an exception for a condition or event at the farm that was not reasonably foreseeable by a person generally familiar with farming, even though it would have been foreseeable at a different type of farm. That is a subtle provision and worth reading twice: it measures foreseeability against your kind of operation.

The parts of a farm day the statute never reaches

Walk a visit from the road and you can see how narrow the immunity really is.

The parking field is land, but parking is not an agritourism activity, and a rut that swallows an ankle in a field you mowed for the weekend is an ordinary premises claim. The farm shop is retail. The bakery counter, the cider press and the cheese cabinet are food businesses, subject to food safety regulation, and Louisiana says in terms that its section does not displace the Louisiana Products Liability Act. The animal contact area raises zoonotic illness, which is a risk of a different kind from the behaviour these statutes describe, and it is answered by hand washing stations, exit signage and a cleaning log rather than by a warning about kicks and bites. The hay ride that leaves your land becomes a road traffic problem the moment it does. Events held on the farm, from weddings to a music night in the barn, have very little to do with farming at all, and are better covered by an event waiver and the right insurance.

This is also where the doctrines stack. A farm in Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Minnesota, North Carolina, North Dakota or South Dakota that keeps horses or a petting pen is very likely relying on three separate bodies of law at once: the agritourism chapter for the farm visit, the equine or farm animal act for the animals, and the recreational use statute for anyone crossing the land to fish or walk. Each has its own sign, its own wording and its own exceptions. None of the three is a contract, and none of them covers the car park, the shop or your own carelessness, which is the job of a signed release.

Building the paperwork around the statute

Six things, and none of them are expensive.

1. Post the sign your own state prescribes, in the letter height and at the locations it names. Louisiana and North Carolina both want it at the entrance and at the activity site, not just at the gate. Photograph it with a date at the start of each season.
2. Register if your state runs a register. In North Dakota that means the division of tourism, and it costs nothing. Diarise the five year renewal.
3. Put the statutory words in the contract as well as on the sign. Indiana requires them in clearly readable print in any written contract or release for access, services, instruction or equipment hire, and permits that contract to be electronic. Iowa requires them in twelve point boldface in every contract and in the signed waiver.
4. Keep the release separate from the statutory warning. They are doing different jobs and a court reads them differently. The warning tells the visitor what the legislature has already taken away. The release is a contract in which the visitor gives up something more, and it has to name the operator's own negligence in its own words. Start from the liability waiver template or the release of liability, and give the release its own heading and its own signature.
5. Ask the intake questions that match the exceptions. Record who is coming, group sizes and ages, whether anyone has mobility limits or allergies, and which activities each group is booked on to. Georgia's age limit alone makes an accurate head count of under eighteens worth keeping, and the guide to waivers for minors explains why a parent's signature does different work in different states.
6. Log the farm, not just the visit. A dated record of gate and fence checks, trailer and equipment servicing, animal behaviour incidents, hand washing supplies and mown parking surfaces answers the latent condition and equipment exceptions directly, which is where these claims actually get decided.

Using the state list that follows

Underneath this page is every jurisdiction in this research with a statute in the agritourism family, with the statute's name, its citation and a link to that state's own page. Eight appear. The list is generated from the same research that produced those state pages, so the citation here and the citation there cannot drift apart.

Follow the link rather than stopping at the row. The state page carries the things this guide deliberately does not repeat: whether that state enforces a release of ordinary negligence at all, how it treats a signature given by a parent, where it draws the gross negligence line, what its electronic signature statute requires, and how long a claim stays alive. Those are what decide whether your paperwork works. The agritourism chapter only decides which claims never needed paperwork in the first place.