We should continue leveraging the Ploughing to showcase what's good about Irish farming
Anthony Murphy of Limerick making the most of the sunshine with an ice cream at the National Ploughing Championships last week. Picture: Dan Linehan
I had the pleasure of attending the National Ploughing Championships this past week plucking up the courage to wade through the slop and muck on Thursday choosing to take the fair weather farmer option rather than the die-hard approach of braving simultaneous soft conditions above head and below feet as experienced on Tuesday and Wednesday.
It has been five years since I attended and sparing time to go is a big effort as the event coincides with the main tax filing deadline for companies. Invariably one will meet at least one person you know and a whole load of people you don’t, and that’s a good thing when you consider just how many people are connected to agriculture.
The NPA deserve great praise for making the event non-exclusive with an eclectic mix of stands with everything from high fashion, cosmetics, household DIY, machinery sales, religious organisations, financial institutions and government bodies just a snapshot of those showing their wares.
It's fair to say that there is hardly a cohort of business and society that’s not represented in some fashion which makes this event unrivalled by global standards as being an event which can offer something to almost everyone.
As farmers, I don’t think we should lose sight of that and we should continue to leverage this event to showcase everything good about Ireland’s farmers and Ireland’s farming.
This year for the first time I brought two in tow with me, and parted with both time and money at the funfair. But this brought back memories of how enjoyable the funfair was when attending as a child decades ago and I know that this will form lasting memories for them in turn.
There did seem to be a big focus on children and teens at the ploughing with hurleys, jerseys and sportswear stands almost two a penny. Given the aforementioned distractions, I was afforded but a brief walk through just a fraction of the machinery stands.
My mission was simple this year with just two items on the wish list; namely a water pre-heater which operates by piggybacking off the condensing unit of a milk tank; and a car trailer. With a map in hand, we made a beeline for those particular stands whilst observing what I could along the way.
It's hard to actually take it all in whilst maintaining the going rate of forward speed preset by the crowd and avoiding those coming against me and making sure not to lose those in tow.
As with previous years, I find it hard to get the attention of stall operators when actually looking to make a genuine enquiry, but I guess after two days of solid pestering by those looking for freebies and tyre-kickers, sales reps must be frazzled and unable to differentiate between those who are actually looking to clinch a deal and the lonely hearts club.
On the freebies side, it never ceases to amaze me how a certain cohort of people both young and old will queue for significant quantums of time in order to obtain something that’s effectively worthless, such as a paper cowboy hat which is likely never to be worn after the event.
With cows to be milked morning and evening and a chunk of travel time needed to get to and from the event, my tolerance for queuing either for worthless tat or to get the attention of disinterested sales reps was non-existent.
I wonder are the NPA missing a trick here where they could offer a trade-only day? Surely the vendors on site would also benefit from a concentration of legitimate buyers?
The NPA had clearly pulled out the stops in terms of making the site somewhat trafficable and volumes of woodchip could be seen. The use of fresh fields for parking was also advantageous for those attending on Thursday, albeit the shuttle transport to and from the site via tractor and trailer could have been a bit more frequent.
After five hours on site, 16,000 steps later, filled with chips and ice cream and armed with the all-important two brochures, we headed for home tired and happy.
