MachineryLink

HAMILTON, NEW ZEALAND (DTN) -- With the farm show season approaching in the U.S., I was fortunate recently to get an early start by attending what promoters call "The Largest Farm Show in the Southern Hemisphere." National Fieldays is a huge celebration of New Zealand agriculture. At 40 years old, it has had time to develop a culture of its own. Charming is a word that comes to mind. If you ever get a chance, Fieldays is worth the long, long trip.

A traffic jam leading out of the city of Hamilton is the first thing you will experience about Fieldays. The drivers are unfailingly polite -- no horn honking, no aggressive hand gestures -- but the line stretches for miles. When you finally park, you walk up a slight rise and look down on a narrow valley filled with white tents, smoke from outdoor cooking and thousands of people.

Over the course of four days in June, more than 120,000 people passed through Fieldays' gates. In a country of only 4.5 million, that's about 2.5% of the entire population, which tells you something about how much New Zealanders love their farmers. If 2.5% of the U.S. population showed up for a farm show, about 7.9 million people would stream through the gates.

As an American at Fieldays, you will compare and contrast it with the great outdoor farm shows that unfurl tents across this country every year. First, the venue for Fieldays is unlike anything you will see here. This is Hobbit country; the opening sequence to the first Lord of the Rings movie was filmed a few miles from the Fieldays site. The valley where the tents are set up is picturesque in a way that is gauzy, green and golden, especially in the early morning fogs that seem to show up on cue.

Second, the food is similar to what you would find at U.S. shows: cooked outdoors, paper plate friendly and undeniably unhealthy. But Fieldays menus reflect the diverse Kiwi culture. Mussels and prawns, sweet and savory crepes, gyros and souvalkis, Scotch fillet burgers with fried eggs on top are all for sale. New Zealanders love their beer and cherish their wines. Pubs under tent roofs are abundant.

The purpose of all farm shows is the same -- to bring together buyers and sellers of farm-related gear. Tractors are on display at Fieldays (no combines because Kiwis do little grain farming), as are dairy equipment of all sorts, fencing materials (because New Zealanders are grass and livestock farmers) and power tools for every job. More than 1,000 exhibitors fill about 232 acres at Fieldays, and promoters estimate annual on-site sales at about $240 million to New Zealanders and as much as $32 million to international buyers.

Games are different at Fieldays. Sure, it has a tractor pull. But have you ever seen a culvert toss? At Fieldays, beefy boys balance 10-foot sections of plastic drainpipe in cupped hands before tossing them. An equipment company demonstrates that its crawler excavators have controls so precise they can maneuver filled wine glasses in their buckets without spilling a drop. But most of all, Kiwis love their fences, and a national champion fence builder has to survive several rounds of competition before he can string fence up a 45-degree slope. It's a point system with time, straightness of posts and strength of the finished high-tensile fence determining the winner.

Entertainment? Bag pipers wind through the crowds. The outdoor stage at the Village Green features skits about the glories of dairy cows. And along the perimeter, a young man cracks leather whips simultaneously with both hands, creating sounds like gunshots that snap through the crowd noise.

One caution for Americans going to Fieldays: New Zealanders drive on the wrong side of the road, just like the British. Which means they also walk on the wrong side of the crowded streets at Fieldays. Learn to do the same or risk bumping into oncoming pedestrian traffic.

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