Why we’re backing the Canterbury A&P Show – Garry Diack

Résumé détaillé

The Canterbury A&P Show is special. For generations, it’s been a place where farming families come together and where town meets country. It’s part of Canterbury’s identity and…

The Canterbury A&P Show is special. For generations, it’s been a place where farming families come together and where town meets country.

It’s part of Canterbury’s identity and for South Island families like mine, it’s an annual tradition.

The Canterbury Show is more than a simple rural event in an urban setting. It is where world-class farmers and growers meet, exchange and demonstrate innovation.

As the years have progressed, this scope has widened from animal and plant breeding to include food processing, technology, capability and productivity. It is a showcase of the next generation of agriculture and the contribution it continues to make to very urban issues, such as funding rural centres, hospitals, roads and infrastructure.

The Show is the “town square” of past and future, of rural and urban, of tradition and innovation.

My first visit to the Show was in 1962. It was a family affair and we were, of course, dressed in our summer best. What I remember about the Show was the smell of animals (back ends mostly), white-coated officials and judges, how proud the riders sat upon their horses, the dust, the candy floss, the magnificent machinery you could climb all over – and getting lost!

It was the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which illustrated our vulnerability to sudden geopolitical upheavals. The Beatles released Love Me Do, starting a cultural movement that would test the ties of our families. The first Americans went into space, using new technology that changed the way we now farm. Europe was considering Britain’s application to join the EEC, which would soon end our reliance on that market.

In that dramatic year, the Canterbury A&P Show served the same purpose it has for 160 years – to help farming communities weather changing times, economic challenges and the evolution of farming itself.

That purpose remains relevant today: giving people confidence by bringing them together to celebrate agriculture, share knowledge and recognise achievement.

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