Innovation takes centre stage at Fieldays 2025 awards event
Hosted by ginger dynamo Te Radar, the Fieldays Innovation Award Winners Event put the spotlight on the agricultural industry's most promising ideas.
Contestants put their machines to the test in the challenging conditions, competing in categories determined by tractor and load weight, age and modifications.
For the first time in many years, the competition welcomed a South Island competitor all the way from Gore, along with a group from the Bay of Plenty.
The wet and muddy track conditions added an extra layer of difficulty to the competition.
Organiser Dan Reymer said that this year was one of the wettest years they've had for a long time.
"We lowered the kilowatt-per-kilo ratio just to get the tractors through the mud. There was still some seriously good racing out there, and it's as much about the driver's skill as the tractor's performance. The winners can come down to fractions of a second," said Reymer.
In the Weight Transfer class, with the aim to pull a tractor mounted sledge down the track, to which weight transfer is gradually added, the winner was contractor Trent Hickford.
Thomas Fare took out the Weigh-Adjusted competition, where two tractors race side by side pulling a concrete block, with its weight adjusted following a measure of horsepower on a dynamometer.
The winner of the Modified Tractor competition went to Wally Sinton, and the Pre-85 Class to Andrew Reymer.
The Brent Garrett Sportsmanship Award went to Rowland Amber and the First Time Entrant Award went to Fergus Goodwin, with the latter commenting, "I've been volunteering for Tractor Pull for over 10 years, and it's the first time I have entered, after peer pressure made me get in the cab".
Helping to power this year's golden anniversary celebrations was new Major Sponsor PTS Logistics, who joined returning sponsors, Corson Maize and Giltrap Agrizone.
