About AgriTourism Speaker Jane Eckert
Jane Eckert is a marketing professional with a lifetime of farm experience and a passion to help farms, ranches, and tourism professionals learn more about agritourism, and how to make their business profitable.
Jane is the founder and CEO of Eckert AgriMarketing, a full-service marketing and consulting firm that offers a variety of services to both the agriculture and tourism industries, helping them harvest the rewards of agritourism. As a public speaker and trainer, Jane has provided Keynote Presentations, Workshops, and Breakout Groups in 31 U.S. states and 5 Canadian Provinces.
A sixth generation farmer’s daughter, Jane grew on the family’s agritourism-focused apple orchard, earned a college degree in Business Administration, and honed her skills for 15 years in an executive career providing corporate marketing for firms such as Atlantic Richfield. She then returned to the family farm, Eckert’s Country Store and Farms, as Vice President of Marketing to develop the farm into one of metropolitan St. Louis’ most popular entertainment and tourist destinations, attracting 400,000 guests annually. She left the farm in 2001 to establish Eckert AgriMarketing.
Jane has been featured in U.S.A. Today, Time and This Week in Agribusiness on RFD-TV,and interviewed for hundreds of newspapers, magazines and radio shows throughout the country. In her speeches and workshops, she has helped thousands of tourism and ag professionals to see the financial benefits of promoting the niche product of agritourism.
Recognitions and Memberships:
- Outstanding Leadership Award, North American Farmers’ Direct Marketing Association (2005)
- Elected to NAFDMA’s Hall of Fame (2008)
- Awarded the Agri Tourism Excellence Achievement Award, World Agri Tourism Day, Pune, India (2008)
- Has been an Active member of Convention and Visitors Bureaus both in Missouri and Illinois
- Past president, St. Louis Attractions Association and the Belleville Tourism in Illinois
- Past president, North American Farmers’ Direct Marketing Association
- Member, National Speakers Association
- Member, National Agri Marketing Association
- Served both the Missouri and the Kansas Agritourism Councils
- Founder and CEO of RuralBounty.com
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