The centre of attention for rural New Zealand this week will be Mystery Creek outside Hamilton, where the 47th national Agricultural Fieldays opens its gates on Wednesday.
Last year's event, also held at Mystery Creek. Photo: RNZ / Andrew McRae
The big week out for the agricultural sector keeps getting bigger.
Chief executive Jon Calder said it had topped 1000 exhibitors for the first time.
Regular visitors to Fieldays would notice some significant changes.
"In the last 12 weeks, we moved over 100,000 cubic metres of earth to create 100 new exhibition sites, which have been taken up by our customers, so the site looks and feels a lot different this year.
"We've filled in the lake in front of the pavilion. We've dug a new lake out into one of the car parks to cater for our stormwater and drainage and relocated our tractor pull site, so we've created a whole lot of new central exhibition space, which is something we've not been able to do for a very long time.
"Our exhibitor numbers are up on last year. We've just cracked a thousand exhibitors for the first time and we are just short of 1500 exhibition sites.
"One of the things we're really pleased about is that in terms of exhibition space, agriculture now occupies 95 percent of the event, with five percent dedicated to rural living and lifestyle products and that's something we're pretty focused on, in terms of making sure that the integrity of the Fieldays event stays true to its core purpose."
