Attendance numbers at the first live Ag in Motion in three years are an indication that demand for outdoor farm shows is as high as ever, show director Rob O’Connor says.
O’Connor said he wasn’t sure what to expect after momentum building during the show’s first five years was quashed when the COVID-19 pandemic response quashed in-person events.
However, combined attendance for the first two days of the 2022 event topped 22,000 — a figure on track for matching or exceeding previous years.
“It’s rejuvenating, actually, to be able to come back to an in-person event, having these big crowds and all of our staff together, all of the exhibitors and farmers that come to the show. Having everybody back, it feels really good after a two-year hiatus,” he said in an interview.
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Ag in Motion, billed as Western Canada’s largest outdoor farm show, is an annual event mounted every summer at a permanent site near Langham, Sask., about 40 km northwest of Saskatoon. The event is owned and operated by Glacier FarmMedia, owner of this website.
This year’s three-day AiM show wraps up Thursday night.
O’Connor said the decision to go live again was complicated during the winter months as new waves of the COVID-19 virus emerged.
“There was a lot of hesitation at the time of planning that with the show be smaller. We didn’t know the effects of the pandemic,” he said. “But the team buckled down. We worked with our exhibiting companies and sponsors and we got it back to where it was.”
This year’s show featured a revamped and expanded livestock section which appears to have been well received, he added.
In addition to 543 exhibitors and thousands of farmers, AiM this year played host to the federal, provincial and territorial agriculture ministers, who took a break from their annual meeting in Saskatoon this week to spend half a day meeting with exhibitors as they toured the show site.
On the subject of ministerial talks toward a new agricultural policy funding framework, “we have seen a lot of progress, and I’m hopeful that we will be able to reach an agreement this week,” federal Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau told reporters Tuesday before heading to Saskatoon.
Sustainable agriculture, she said, needs to be “in the heart of our discussion and in the heart of the next agreement” — and ministers will discuss how to improve ag sustainability at the farm level while also ensuring agrifood businesses and farmers are “competitive in the world market.”
