Fieldays looks the same, but difference in detail
It’s the same rows of white tents and new farm gear beneath a familiar Waikato grey sky, but this year’s National Agricultural Fieldays is the first of its kind.
With a new date, the festival of all things farming was moved from June to November to overcome Covid constraints earlier in the year.
The changed format has also seen a suite of new exhibitors display their wares at the four-day festival at Hamilton’s Mystery Creek.
One such exhibitor is the Department of Corrections.
Here for the first time and with a team of ten staff members and an escort van in tow, the organisation that runs the country’s prisons was there in a recruitment capacity and to remind cockies that they too run agricultural programmes for offenders.
Tania Kuiti, the Waikato recruitment lead for the department said: ‘‘we’re here to show to the public that we offer more than just careers as corrections officers.’’
The department also runs agriculture and horticulture programmes at their Tongariro and Waikeria prisons.
‘‘It’s an opportunity to lift the veil,’’ Kuiti said.
Further down the seemingly endless row of exhibitors’ gazebos is Enterprise Ireland’s stall. The stall is erected annually by the arm of the Irish government asked with promoting business from the Emerald Isle, in this case agribusiness.
One of the businesses hosted in the stall was Flockwatch. Meryn Harvey the company’s head of growth was on hand to introduce New Zealand farmers to the appbased platform used by 18,000 farmers across the UK and Ireland that allows them to monitor which drenches, medicines and treatments their flocks have received.
Harvey, who arrived in the country on Monday and went straight to a farm in Waipu to begin product testing, said the event has been ‘‘a little bit wet and a little bit quiet’’ so far.
In the nearby innovation tent was Koji Hasegawa. From Japan and in New Zealand to learn sheep management and shearing, he was looking for equipment he could use on his own Japanese sheep farm.
‘‘I’ve bought a weigh station. I didn’t mean to, but it was good price,’’ he laughed.
The weighing facility will be cheaper than the equivalent product in Japan, even when shipping costs are considered, he said.
For many punters Fieldays is just an opportunity to look around, climb about hulking machinery and talk shop with like-minded folk.
Vic Thackray was there to do just that. Having come to the event from Warkworth, he said he had long since retired from farming but was interested all the same.
‘‘Everyone is keeping their hands in
their pocket this year. There are some great ideas ready to go, but there’s just no confidence,’’ Thackray said.
Representing New Zealand’s $53.3 billion food and fibre export sector, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE) were on hand to ingratiate New Zealand business with foreign investment and interest.
Recently returned from the Netherlands was Erik Dijkstra. Dijkstra is NZTE’s European beachheads adviser whose role it is to assist European businesses cultivate professional relationships with New Zealand producers and exporters.
Dijkstra, who had visited the event on two previous occasions in the 1980s, said the new summer date worked well for those coming from overseas.
‘‘It was a dreadful experience, because coming from a summer into the winter time when everything was even more rainy and muddy than it is today was not an experience I wanted to repeat often,’’ Dijkstra said.
The poor weather was the reason Leon Polglase-Wills, John Mellish and Matthew Mabey were in the Waikato yesterday. Usually the agricultural contractors are in the Manawatu ploughing fields, sowing crops and making silage.
‘‘We’ve had a hold-up with the weather down there [Manawatu], it’s a pain in the ass. It makes it hard to put crops in the crowd,’’ said Mellish.