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| Mendocino County Fairground, Boonville, California February 2022 |
St. Louis Public Radio ran this story a few days ago, about how farm shows have changed as a consequence of the pandemic, with reporting by Jonathan Ahl. Here's an excerpt:
JONATHAN AHL, BYLINE: Dozens of farmers and their families are walking among the giant combines, tractors and other farm equipment that can cost up to a half a million dollars each. This is the scene at the Ag Expo in Sedalia, Mo. Local corn and soybean farmer Bill Taylor loves it. He says it's a low-pressure way to check out a lot of different things.
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| Mendocino County Fairgrounds, Boonville, California February 2022 |
BILL TAYLOR: If you want to talk to a guy, you can. If you want to walk by, you can. And that's what we like about - there's a little bit of everything here. I mean, we got anything from siding to gutters to tractor tires, fertilizer buggies, livestock equipment.
AHL: Like most farm shows, this one was canceled last year over COVID concerns. This year, it's back in full force. But some farm shows across the country canceled again, and others just went online. Danny Young is a rural banker who loans to farmers and is on the planning commission of Sedalia's farm show.
DANNY YOUNG: A lot of farmers - they're hands-on kind of people. They don't really want to sit in front of a computer or something and do it virtually. They want to get out of the house. They want to go to town. They want to touch the machinery. They want to talk to the people. And it's not a real virtual clientele.
AHL: But many in the ag business think virtual connections might be the future and the in-person farm show doesn't have much life left.
JIM MANDES: We were well on this path, and just COVID kind of proved the point to a lot of people.
AHL: Jim Mandes is a sales manager with Krone, maker of machines for hay production like mowers and balers. He says with consolidations every year, there are fewer farmers to sell to, and most are tech savvy enough to research big purchases on their own.
MANDES: They know more about what they're buying than they did 20 years ago, 10 years ago, three years ago. The relevance of a trade show - physically seeing machines and talking to reps - is not what it once was.
AHL: While businesses may be looking for more bang for their buck at farm shows, the towns that host them say the money is only part of the narrative. They say the shows are just as much about community, identity and a full embrace of the farming lifestyle.
Yes, I know a farm equipment show and a county fair are not the same thing, but it reminded me of this story from the Christian Science Monitor, way back in 2017, about county fairs. The dateline is Craig, Colorado, in Moffat County, and the headline is "A County Fair Offers Pie--and a Window on the Rural-Urban Divide." An excerpt follows:
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| Mendocino County Fairground, Boonville, California February 2022 |
Editorials and politicians struggle to explain the polarization of this country. On the East and West fringes of America, and the scattered blazes of urban areas in between, each news flash from the White House is parsed and plumbed for meaning.
Better, perhaps, to stop to watch at this small country fair tucked in the northwest corner of Colorado. This is Trump country. And coal country. It’s a place where ranchers and miners and wheat farmers with hard hands keep to harder politics.
None of that’s on the agenda of the two-week fair, a homey event with no carnival rides, but a rodeo on Friday night and three metal barns for exhibits. Folks in the sagebrush hills of this rural county of 12,000 say they feel little connection with the great urban beehives. Their evidence for that is at the fair, in scenes that have nothing to do with politics.
You really need to read this entire story to get a feel for how deeply engrained these cultural practices are. You get that sense from reading about the kids taking care of and raising their animals for show. And that reminded me of these scenes, which I recently photographed in Boonville, California, home to the Mendocino County Fair. It's interesting to see the focus on wool and lambs there given that I didn't see a lot of sheep, though I did see sheep grazing among the vineyards the last morning I was there, before the sun was high in the sky. I regret not getting a photo of those sheep in that vineyard (by Lichen Estate, I might add, between Boonville and Philo) because when I passed back through as the fog was lifting, the sheep were gone.
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| Mendocino County Fairgrounds, Boonville, California February 2022 |
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| Mendocino County Fairgrounds, Boonville, California February 2022 |
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