You've always been there ...

Welcome to our annual Farm Show issue. You know there are those who say the farm show is a marketing tactic that's been around forever, certainly can't work anymore and certainly doesn't appeal to the young, progressive farmer. It's the marketing tactic that every "bean-counter" in corporate agribusiness questions when sales and marketing management submits their budget requests. They say that it's the marketing tactic that's very difficult to show direct results for your efforts and is a major chore to pull off well.

Well here's another view. As I wrote in this column several years ago, at the height of the Internet frenzy, if a Web site was launched that had comparable traffic of like-minded purchasers of farm-related products that farm shows had, venture capitalists and investment bankers would have been as giddy as ... well, you fill in the rest.

Now further market research results from the ABM Agri Council "Agricultural Media Study," conducted by Harris Interactive, shows that farm shows rank near the top as the place where young, progressive farmers and ranchers go to learn about new products. Nearly half of the youngest farmers and ranchers rely on farm shows in this way. Among all age groups it is the third-highest rated source to learn about new products. Nearly one-third of the largest (total revenue greater than $750K) farmers and ranchers rely on farm shows to learn about new products.