increase font size
Central Districts Field Days sales manager Cheryl Riddell.
Fondly known as ‘the best day off the farm all year’, Central Districts Field Days is gearing up for its 26th event.
Now the largest regional field days in New Zealand, its roots stretch back to 1993 when Don Eade started it as an annual event.
Many of its features remain unchanged:
- Its location at Manfeild, which requires that a ‘paddock’ be transformed into a ‘mini town’ in a matter of days
- The line-up of farm machinery and tractors, hallmarks of the industry and to the people who come to see them
- The thousands of visitors and hundreds of exhibitors, united in their passion for a thriving agricultural community.
But, of course, the three-day event has also grown up over time.
Sales manager Cheryl Riddell says the event started with 230 sites occupied by exhibitors; now it has 550.
Businesses clamour to take part because of other exhibitors’ success, she says.
“For example, Lumberland got 74 leads to quote on farm buildings during the last field days, plus another 15 the following week.
“The opportunity is immense for businesses to connect with customers, and vice versa. It’s a great way for people to get what they need all in one place and to have some fun.”
This opportunity hasn’t gone unnoticed; other events have sprung up to make the most of the groundswell. The field days now rounds out NZ AgriFood Week, which started in 2016, and follows the rural games which began in 2015.
About 30,000 visitors regularly attend and events are held within the show, e.g. the National Excavator Operator competition that has been at Central Districts field days right from the start.
“The excavator competition is a lot more exciting than it may sound to some. Attempting to manoeuvre big machinery to do intricate tasks like pour a cup of tea is great entertainment, and the way farming machinery comes to life at the event like this is what makes it so captivating to visitors,” Riddell says.
The event requires an annual set-up of everything from basic infrastructure like water and power, to erecting hundreds of sites over a matter of days.
Cheryl has attended every event and says “It’s worth it”.
AGCO has released details of the new SB.1436DB small square, or conventional baler, that rather unconventionally, produces two rows of bales per field pass, so doubling the output over a traditional single baler producing 14-by-18-inch bales.
After establishing its own engine facility in the UK in 2004, followed by an Indian plant in 2010, JCB currently builds around 500 of its Dieselmax engines every day and hit the one million units milestone in late 2024.
You cannot go far in farming without encountering fasteners such as nuts and bolts, given that expensive plant, machinery and buildings are held together by them and your gates would not fill gateways if they were missing.
Increased efficiency has been a key driver for New Zealand’s farmers to meet the challenge of increased demand with fewer resources.
Designed to allow customers to adopt technology and reduce costs, John Deere’s Precision Essentials Programme, offers those customers the option to either buy all their precision agriculture (PA) technology upfront, or select only the hardware and software that will be most valuable to their business.
Commodity prices and interest rates play a huge role in shaping farmer confidence, but these factors are beyond their control, says Federated Farmers dairy chair Richard McIntyre.
DairyNZ is supporting a proposed new learning model for apprenticeships and traineeships that would see training, education, and pastoral care delivered together to provide the best chance of success.
Two agritech companies have joined forces to help eliminate manual entry and save farmer time.
The recent squabble between the Cook Islands and NZ over their deal with China has added a new element of tension in the relationship between China and NZ.
The world is now amid potentially one of the most disruptive periods in world trade for a very long time.
Former Westland Milk boss Richard Wyeth is taking over as chief executive of Canterbury milk processor Synlait from May 19.
OPINION: Henry Dimbleby, author of the UK's Food Strategy, recently told the BBC: "Meat production is about 85% of our…
OPINION: For the last few weeks, we've witnessed a parade of complaints about New Zealand's school lunch program: 'It's arriving…
