Jochinke: Come back stronger
Repeated field-day cancellations in the Wimmera-mallee have prompted an agriculture leader to urge the community to maintain its support for showcase events beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.
Wimmera Machinery Field Days past president and National Farmers Federation vice-president David Jochinke said the field-days hiatus was a major loss for the industry.
His comments came after Mallee Machinery Field Days organisers cancelled the August 4 and 5 agricultural showcase at Speed due to Victoria’s fifth COVID-19 lockdown.
Lockdowns leading up to March also forced Wimmera Machinery Field Days committee to cancel this year’s event. The event went ahead in 2020 just weeks before the onset of the pandemic.
Mr Jochinke said annual trade shows represented an opportunity for regional and rural communities to unite in a celebration of agriculture.
“It is an absolute disappointment that we’re in this situation of having to cancel another event in the region, especially for agriculture,” he said.
“Field days are an opportunity for us to get together and share experiences.
“We’ve also had a reasonable season and haven’t been able to celebrate that with our friends in agriculture due to the cancellations.”
Mr Jochinke said support from the agricultural sector and wider community would be key to the event’s continuation beyond the pandemic.
“If COVID has taught us anything, if you don’t get behind these events when they can return, they will die a natural death,” he said.
“In many ways this is a call to arms for the farming sector. If there’s an event on and we don’t support it could be the last one.”
Mr Jochinke said morale from committees in rural communities, which organise field days, would be low.
“Committees put a lot of time and effort into these events. If the agriculture community doesn’t value it, we might not have it in the future,” he said.
“There’s the hard economics of not running the event, but the other part to consider is organisers can lose motivation. The question will be how do we get that back for next season.”
Mr Jochinke said it would be important for organisers to focus on strengths, such as exhibits and social aspects of field days, to future-proof the events.
“One thing that field days do above anything else is give farmers the opportunity to eyeball products side-by-side in the same period,” he said.
“That aspect of the field days will always be their niche.
“There’s also not too many events where farmers gather in a social setting to look at machinery and celebrate the season together quite like a field days. You can’t get that in any online experience.”
Mr Jochinke said the break also represented a catalyst in leaders reshaping the format and presentation of the annual showcase events.
“Demonstrations field days were based on, and the monopoly they once had on information over latest releases of machinery, are no longer their niche with the advent of the internet and farmers becoming tech-savvy,” he said.
“I think the future of field days will still be relevant, but the format in how that is presented and making sure it’s a celebration of agriculture and family friendly is going to be the real challenge moving forward in the next few years.”
• Mallee Machinery Field Days leaders remain positive, pages 36 and 37.