The gates to Fieldays, New Zealand's largest agricultural event opened on Wednesday morning after its usual June event was postponed due to COVID-19 impacts.
Rachel Smalley spoke to Peter Nation, the CEO of the New Zealand National Fieldays Society.
Fieldays is a massive event taking over Mystery Creek in Hamilton with hundreds of thousands in attendance, but how many exactly? Nation broke down the numbers Fieldays sees.
"Fieldays has grown considerably over the years, this will be the 54th year," Nation told Smalley.
"We have over 130,000 people through the gate, and over a thousand exhibitors, It's the largest outdoor event in the southern hemisphere by volume, but also the number of exhibitors. On a global stage for an outside agricultural event of its size, it ranks in the top five.
"It's a very large event from an agricultural point of view, but it's a very large even from a business-to-business standpoint where a lot of the exhibitors are doing business amongst themselves and looking for technology opportunities or distribution opportunities."
For those heading to Mystery Creek, Nation explained what visitors can expect when passing through the Fieldays gate.
"On top of the exhibitions and release of new technology and sale of products... In the last few years, we've started to focus the event around our three strategic pillars of innovation, education and globalisation.
"We've put in a health and wellbeing hub, a careers hub, we have our innovation hub. And then on top of that, this year, for the first time, we're opening a new forestry hub, these hubs are very much focused on a number of exhibitors coming together to educate people in those various sectors."
Listen to the full interview between Peter Nation and Rachel Smalley above.
You can also download the full interview on the First Light podcast, and listen on the go.
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