{"id":477611,"date":"2026-06-15T00:29:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T00:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/477611\/"},"modified":"2026-06-15T00:29:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T00:29:08","slug":"fieldays-2026-record-turnout-comes-with-growing-pains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/477611\/","title":{"rendered":"Fieldays 2026: Record turnout comes with growing pains"},"content":{"rendered":"

Exhibitor and vendor sites were sold out a month before the event, with 1100 stalls on display.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you have waiting lists for people wanting to exhibit and when you have queues of people down the road wanting to attend, those are issues about growth.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said organisers had begun planning how to better utilise space for next year.<\/p>\n

Fieldays spent $3.2 million this year on a new water reticulation system to better accommodate the large crowds, Lindroos said. <\/p>\n

Their next infrastructure build would be around energy resilience and energy security.<\/p>\n

High fuel prices didn\u2019t keep visitors away. <\/p>\n

Public transport was up slightly more than usual, with about 18,000 people moving on public transport from the greater Waikato region.<\/p>\n

However, Lindroos had expected public transport use to be higher. <\/p>\n

Months ago, the team had prepared for \u201cmodified\u201d Fieldays to accommodate high fuel prices, but these issues never came to fruition.<\/p>\n

The turnout had also been credited to the current buoyant rural economy, with farmers in a good spending mood.<\/p>\n

In April, dairy giant Fonterra\u2019s thousands of shareholders received payouts, following a $4.2 billion sale of its consumer brands business<\/a> of well-known products like Anchor butter and Mainland cheese.<\/p>\n

Farmers are using the payouts to invest in long-term business decisions and repay debts, which have fallen almost $5 billion since a 2018 peak.<\/p>\n

Federated Farmers president Wayne Langford noticed spending was up at this year\u2019s Fieldays as a result of the payouts. <\/p>\n

He noticed his peers investing in new machinery and planning for the long-term.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really awesome to see the sector humming again,\u201d Langford said.<\/p>\n

Clothing tents were also full at all times, with small-ticket items on the up as well, he said. Langford happily bought himself a new raincoat.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was great to see all the tents full, the laughs, the smiles, everyone connecting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Nearly the full Cabinet were here\/<\/p>\n

Among the growing crowd were many politicians across political parties, campaigning for the upcoming election.<\/p>\n

Lindroos noticed more politicians at the event than usual.<\/p>\n

\u201dIn fact, nearly the full Cabinet were here,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cOnly a couple of ministers were missing.\u201d<\/p>\n

National\u2019s Todd McClay spoke at several events over the four days, and announced that meat and wool export revenue climbed 14%.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe rural vote is important, but this is an event that brings town and country together,\u201d Lindroos said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the direct marketing to your voters in election year, and it gives people opportunity to have those conversations they want to have and connect with the politicians.\u201d<\/p>\n

– This story was first published on rnz.co.nz<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Exhibitor and vendor sites were sold out a month before the event, with 1100 stalls on display. \u201cWhen…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":477612,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2246,138,2220,8608,128744,226,111,139,69,88247,1974,218174,39877,102],"class_list":["post-477611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-2246","tag-business","tag-carter","tag-comes","tag-fieldays","tag-growing","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-pains","tag-record","tag-sammy","tag-turnout","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477611\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}