Following pandemic-related cancellations in 2021 and 2022, organizers have again called off the Vermont Farm Show for January 2023.
Farmers from across the state and region typically attend the annual trade show, which has been running since the 1930s, to meet with vendors and learn about new industry technology. It’s also a place for agricultural organizations to hold annual meetings and for farmers in different corners of Vermont, New York, New Hampshire, Canada and elsewhere to connect.
In the years leading up to the pandemic, attendance dropped off, and fewer vendors signed up for spots, said Kyla Bedard, vice president of the Vermont Farm Show board. Shows in 2021 and 2022 were canceled because of the pandemic.
The board is currently without a president, she said. Dave Martin, the previous president, stepped down at the end of a three-year term, as directed by the board’s bylaws. They’re also missing a farm show manager, who would typically organize and run the show.
“Being a fully volunteer board, it just felt like a huge lift to pull it all together,” Bedard said.
With help from the state’s Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets, the board plans to coordinate a focus group with leaders in the agricultural sector to “ensure the event evolves with current needs and wants of the Vermont agriculture community in the 21st century.” The group plans to meet for the first time this week.
Anson Tebbetts, secretary of the Agency of Agriculture, said the three-day event may have posed a challenge for vendors who needed to step away from their businesses during that time.
Bedard said the show has been held during the winter to make it easier for farmers to attend, but the mid-week, daytime scheduling may have still presented a hurdle for attendees.
Agriculture, like other industries, has changed in response to the vast online marketplace, Tebbetts said, which may have also made the show less vital for some farmers.
“E-commerce has changed the world, and agriculture is not alone in that,” he said. “So these one-on-one personal relationships that may have been tremendously valued a decade ago may not be as important as they are now, because they have a different way of relating with their farmers on how to sell them their products.”
Still, farmers and vendors described the show to VTDigger as a place to forge new social and business relationships, and said the absence of the show for yet another year will mark a loss for the local industry.
“We used to go, take our employees up, take a day off and go up,” said Brian Kemp, president of the board of directors of the Champlain Valley Farmer Coalition. “We always enjoyed seeing farmers that you don't see other times of the year.”
Bob Almeida, owner of the Orwell-based Homestead Fence Company, has been a vendor at the show. While he currently has plenty of work to keep him busy, he often meets new clients at the show and reconnects with customers he’s worked with in the past.
“We were kind of looking forward to it,” he said. “We have relationships like with a lot of the other vendors — it's that one time of the year that we see them, from all over the state, New Hampshire and all that. It's too bad.”
Steve Taylor, a former commissioner of New Hampshire’s Department of Agriculture, Markets and Food, said many members of the farming community in New Hampshire often attend Vermont’s show, and vice versa.
“You have to look at it in the context of what's happening in agriculture,” said Taylor, who lives in Plainfield, New Hampshire.
Some wonder whether the show’s troubles are a reflection of broader challenges in the industry as a whole. Vermont’s farming community has seen a demographic shift, Bedard said, and an uptick in consolidations paired with a loss of small farmers means the number of farmers in the state has shrunk.
While those shifts may be a factor, it’s hard to tell what, exactly, is influencing the attendance of the event, Bedard said. Regardless, she said the board expressed unanimous agreement that the show should return in the coming years.
“Hopefully with a collaboration of partners behind us, we'll be able to come back better than ever in 2024,” Bedard said.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont Farm Show canceled for 3rd consecutive year.
