National Agricultural Fieldays postponed from June to November

Fieldays 2019. Photo / Alan Gibson

National Agricultural Fieldays has been postponed from June and will now go ahead from November 30 - December 3, 2022.

Fieldays, held at the Mystery Creek Events Centre near Hamilton, is the largest agriculture show in the Southern Hemisphere, drawing in 130-thousand people from across New Zealand and Australia.

It was too difficult to plan for such a large event while New Zealand is still in the red traffic light system, Fieldays chief executive Peter Nation told The Country's Jamie Mackay.

"We got constant feedback from suppliers of supply chain issues and even companies that are supplying us couldn't support us in June.

While it was "a difficult decision" to postpone, Nation said it was important Fieldays went ahead due to the "huge support" from the industry.

"That gave us the confidence to have a go."

Fieldays will now be up against another large agricultural event in November, the New Zealand Agricultural Show (formerly known as the Canterbury A and P Show), which recently changed its dates to November 9-11.

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Nation said he was "mindful" of the timing.

"Our event will go after that so it's going to require a lot of support from our suppliers, marquee companies and things to cover both.

"We want to see them succeed and I'm sure everyone will get behind us and make this a success."

The weather will also be different as the event was usually held "in the middle of winter," however it wasn't a bad time for farmers, Nation said.

"We've got a massive timetable with lambing and calving, cropping, all those sort of things and we were trying to navigate around that.

"It's been a lot of weeks of work. There's a lot of money at stake. People's livelihoods - all those things.

"So, yep, we're quite confident - we've put a date in the ground and we'll see how it goes."

Cancelling Fieldays was also an option but it would have been "really hard on our balance sheet" Nation said.

"It doesn't even bear thinking about. Two years ago when we didn't run in 2020 we posted a loss of nearly $4 million - so we know how catastrophic that can be."

Cancellation didn't just affect the event either, he said.

"We're really, really mindful of the impact on the event industry and how much money they make out of our event.

"We're also mindful of the sales and the economic contribution our event brings to Waikato and New Zealand. The sales and the contribution to the GDP are immense."

There were also the "intangibles" that a larger rural event can bring to the community around health and wellbeing and careers, Nation said.

"There are a lot of positives about this time and we just urged everyone to get in behind it and make it a success."