Ag-in-Motion set new benchmarks at this year’s show and it’s catching the eye of the international agriculture community.
This year’s show welcome 31-thousand 166 guests; breaking it down: Day 1 had 9-thousand 827 attendees; Day 2, 13-thousand 084; and Day 3 had 8-thousand 255.
580 exhibitors were at the show, beating the previous record of 562 in 2018.
Show Director Rob O’Connor says the show drew quite a bit of international attention. There were visitors from Australia, France, Germany, India, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Ukraine, the U.K. and the U.S.
“What’s exciting to me is our exhibitors and the other stakeholders of the industry are bringing these delegations to our show,” O’Connor said. “We don’t actually advertise outside of western Canada, so any of those companies that are bringing people in are doing so on their own, and they’re seeing a reason and a purpose to do so, which again tells me as a show organizer that we’re doing things right at Ag-in-Motion.”
The 3-day show was on the Discovery Farm Langham site, a hundred acres of land, just northwest of Saskatoon.
For a show that size, cleanup would be a lengthy process and O’Connor says they’re not quite done.
“We’re probably two-thirds of the way through, quite a bit of the large equipment has left but there’s still tours coming in to see some of the crop plots so we had two tours through the site,” he said. “We’re working towards getting it cleaned up but we’re probably still a good week away from being complete.”
O’Connor says the first of three surveys for feedback on this year’s show was sent out last week, and the other two will be sent this week.
He expects feedback to come within the next 2-4 weeks, then will sit down to discuss what worked and how to improve the show for next year.
He says infrastructure improvements will be a focus moving forward.
“What a lot of people don’t recognize is our show is still running with about a third of the property without underground power, so we still utilize about 39 or so generators on the property during the show. We also don’t have running water so all the water is trucked in that we need for the show.” O’Connor explained. ” We have to continue investing in some roads, potentially some more buildings, so this property will continue grow and evolve over the next several years as that capital budget expands.”
Next year’s Ag-in-Motion is scheduled for July 16th through the 18th.
