Positive farming sector comes out to spend at Fieldays

Wallets were open, tills were ringing and cards were swiped as the spending drought ended at this year’s Fieldays at Mystery Creek.

Buoyed by a higher dairy payout along with good prices in the drystock and horticulture sectors, and clear blue skies, the event saw a record Thursday for the event with 33,528 people through the gates.

‘‘It looked busy, it felt busy, it was busy,’’ Fieldays chief executive Peter Nation said.

Large SOLD stickers were shown on a number of tractors at Waikato tractor and machinery company Power Farming.

One $340,000 machine was sold to a Timaru farmer and marketing director Brett Maber said there were lots of inquiries that would be followed up after the Fieldays was over.

‘‘It’s hard to tell how well we actually did, to be fair. We’ll know in about two weeks once we follow up the inquiries. But my gut feeling is it’s been a really good one.’’

Power Farming was also named ‘‘best site’’ at the Fieldays. Maber said it was nice for his team to be recognised.

‘‘We spend a couple of weeks before setting up, getting all the gear here, assembling it and the signage. So it’s quite nice.

He said the mood was a lot different from last year.

‘‘This time last year farmers were coming off the back of two pretty hard years.

‘‘They’ve certainly hit the bottom and bounced back quite nicely.’’