Buoyant farm economy lifts expectations for 2026 Southern Field Days

This year’s iteration of the biennial event takes place on its dedicated site at Waimumu, near Gore, from February 11 to 13, with exhibitor sites all sold out about three months ago.

It will feature all the regular
attractions including Tractor Pull, Farm Innovation Awards, and Speed Shearing and Fencing competitions.

Henderson said the event footprint was very similar to the last Field Days in 2024, with about 700 exhibitor sites.

Some sites were being shared, giving total exhibitor numbers of around 800.

The “gut feel” among exhibitors was that they going to be very happy with the event, he said.

He noted that red meat is more buoyant this year than it was in 2024, and there would definitely be a lot more capital expenditure and R&M (repairs and maintenance) in farm budgets.

Henderson, a dairy farmer from Awarua along with wife Tracy – also a Southern Field Days committee member – is overseeing his second Field Days as chairman.

Henderson recalled the “tough call” that had to be made to cancel the 2022 event because of the Covid pandemic, and he said the event still had not fully recovered from that loss.

“Financially, though, there was quite a few site holders that left money in, which gave us the ability to run through to the next year.

“This Field Days here should get us back to where we should be. Last year was just probably a break even with no real spare money for development or anything like site improvement.”

However, he said “the odd bit of refurbishment” was now underway including a new loading bay being built to accommodate bigger trucks and make it a bit more user friendly.

The Southern Field Days at Waimumu next month is banking on a buoyant primary sector for success, says chairman Steve Henderson.

“We’ve knocked quite a few willows down that were sort of segregating exhibitor paddocks, so hopefully it comes across as one whole site now rather than segregated areas, so that should be one quite big improvement this year.”

Another effect of Covid was the disruption to supply chains that made it difficult for machinery importers to get stock into the country but Henderson said that had passed and most machinery exhibitors had really good stocks to show off.

A couple of them had asked in the last three or four weeks to reduce their site sizes because they were not going to be able to fill them, but Henderson believed that may be due to them selling items they had intended to put on display.

“The gear they thought they had, they’ve sold. So that’s a good reflection of what’s happening out there in the economy.”