The Discovery Farm Langham site, northwest of Saskatoon, won’t be full of activity until next year.
That’s the home of Ag-in-Motion, which wrapped up yesterday (Thurs). Day one had rain and gusty winds, but the next two days brought sunshine and warm temperatures. As far as attendance went Wednesday appeared to be the busiest day of the three.
Show Director Rob O’Connor says preparation for next year is already underway.
“For 2024’s show we have…the first draft of the budget complete and we’re going to the exhibitors with an opportunity for them to purchase their new booth spaces for next year as well.” O’Connor said.
The next few days, he says, will be spent cleaning up the site and preparing for Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show in Woodstock, Ontario, which is set for September 12-14.
He says soon they will get results on how Ag-in-Motion did and discuss what went well and how to improve the show.
In addition to the equipment demonstrations, there was programming at BMO Livestock Central for livestock producers. O’Connor sees that expanding in the future, as well as on the tech side of the show.
“I think the livestock component of our show will probably continue to increase, but I think our team’s going to look at it and talk about where else can we find that and how can we represent the other livestock industries that aren’t here. We have some poultry and we have some dairy but I don’t think its at the representative numbers of this province yet, so we need to go and speak to those industries and see (if) Ag-in-Motion is a fit for them too.”
“I think from a global perspective there’s some amazing electronic and digital stuff that’s coming…I’m certainly interested to see in the next probably 2-4 years how that technology really starts to play out and how its coming to the show.” O’Connor added.
One notable statistic shared at Ag-in-Motion was the record number of exhibitors at 580.
“A good job of marrying (grain and livestock) in one location”
Long-time agricultural commentator Kevin Hursh was at Ag-in-Motion, and was impressed with how far the agriculture industry has come in the last 30 years, saying it was hard to imagine back then what the industry would look like today with all the advances in technology and consolidation.
“A whole lot of choices, the decisions people make on their inputs and on their equipment choices and it has really become big business, whereas farmers at one time were sort of looked down as the poor business cousins trying to survive on a parcel of land somewhere and went through many tough years. Now we’re in a situation where there is tremendous capital and wealth within the ag sector, not that it’s easy but you look at the balance sheets of many producers, especially the medium-to-large size producers and the equipment that they run, it would have been unimaginable decades ago.” Hursh said.
Hursh praised the set up of Ag-in-Motion.
“This is really all of the things in agriculture and a livestock component as well. People tend to think this is a crop show, they got over 90 exhibitors that are strictly dealing with the livestock side so they’ve done a good job of marrying the two together in one location.” he said.
