Ag shows project a spicy new flavor
Ag at Large
For many farmers in California February is farm show month, and the shows are highlights of the year. Subtle changes in the structure of the shows are broadening their appeal.
What is not changing are the dates for the two major shows. The Colusa Farm Show will be staged in the first week of February, and World Ag Expo in Tulare will be held in the second week. To be precise, the dates for the Colusa show are February 7-9, and for the Tulare show February 14-16. For both it is the latest in the month they are ever held.
A few years ago the management of the show in Colusa decided to change its name to the Colusa Farm Show. For the previous 40 years it was known as the Colusa Orchard Equipment Show. It was never completely dedicated to orchard equipment, so the revision in title was entirely logical, but subtle.
Otherwise the menu for the show held at the Colusa Fairgrounds is more businesslike and a little less folksy than it was in its beginning stages. Its appeal is.strong for equipment manufacturers and representatives who display their equipment in outdoor spaces and indoor booths. But it is even stronger for farmers who come to evaluate the products on display and get their lungs filled with that invigorating “new tractor smell.”
Management at the Colusa show is proud of its motto as the Granddaddy of Farm Shows. As it ages granddaddy shows no fear of adopting new ideas and approaches, subtle or more obvious.
Adopting the title World Ag Expo for the 44-year-old show in Tulare was a challenge at first, but it has become fully accepted. It’s sponsorship by the International Agricenter helps reinforce the worldwide flavor. At show time 60 translators are kept busy matching foreign visitors with the 1,400 exhibitors.
More obvious is Ag Expo’s outreach beyond tire-kicking farmers and farm equipment junkies. The staging last year of an evening of musical entertainment broadened the show’s appeal noticeably. Response indicates it resonated with a sufficiently large segment of those attracted to Ag Expo that it should be repeated, perhaps annually. Another musical extravaganza is part of this year’s show package.
Also growing out of the show’s all American foundation is its kick-off in 2012 of the Ag Warriors program, with an introduction by no less than former President George Bush, “dubyah” to his close friends and some members of the national press corps. The program is designed to help military retirees find employment in agriculture, and support training and work experience that will make that possible.
What will not change at either show is the availability of food and favors. Nineteen food booths operated by local school and charitable groups dot the vast grounds at World Ag Expo, and a smaller number provide those irresistible barbeque and cooking aromas at Colusa.
Festivity has become a foundation for the popular farm shows, and that is not changing. Attracting those beyond the farm environment fits nicely with the currently popular campaign of relating farms and farming to the non-farm audience.
The whole farm show phenomenon is an example of agriculture’s open arms relationship to urban and cosmopolitan citizens. It’s a friendship thing, a subtlety, a bit of humanity extended by the farm oriented to anybody and everybody. “Y’all come,” is what the farm-based folks are saying. “Whatever interests are represented we’re going to be broad enough to appeal to them.”
By wrapping that attitude around the huge displays of sophisticated farm equipment the shows are ensuring their permanence, their relevance and their good taste — especially at those food booths.
Don Curlee is a agriculture consultant in the Valley. His column appears each Monday in The Recorder.
