Now I am no doctor, but, if you live in the city and it seems that around you there is nothing but bad economic news, growing deficits, financial black holes, jobs under threat, I have some therapy for you.

Agfest is on again at Quercus Park from Thursday to Saturday.

This event is one of the largest on the national agricultural calendar across Australia is nothing short of mind-boggling. It has been going for more than 30 years and is now bigger than Ben-Hur. It is an exhibition on a grand scale of our industry.

There’s everything you could possibly imagine on display – from sheep dog trials to vintage machinery. Experts galore can be found to answer just about any question that’s been niggling away at you for ages. And a there’s a myriad of things to tempt you to open your wallets – gizmos for the garden, kit for the kitchen, winter woollies and so much more.

Agfest demonstrates what people, predominantly young people because it is run by Rural Youth, can achieve when they put their minds to a common task. The organisation is amazing. Just getting the cars smoothly into the car parks is a military operation in itself. Where do all these foot soldiers come from? Vulnerable nations have fallen to lesser armies.

The genesis of Agfest is in the world ploughing championships held at Longford in June 1982 on Martin Dumaresq’s Mount Ireh property. It is touted as having been the biggest sporting event ever held in Tasmania.

Over the couple of days of the championships, 40,000 people came to watch the best from across the globe plough Mount Ireh’s flat paddocks as straight and uniformly deep as is humanly possible. They are the ones below that small church on the hill on Pateena Road. Scandinavians are particularly impressive at this, I’m told. This is a skill fast being outmoded by modern science – but laser technology lasers take the fun out of it.

In those drills were sown the seeds of an idea that germinated in Agfest.

Some visionary members of Rural Youth saw an opportunity in the public reaction to the ploughing championships to encourage the broader community to interact more with farming activities. And they succeeded far beyond what anyone could have imagined.

The first Agfest was held in May 1983 at Symmons Plains. It had 111 exhibitors and 9000 visitors. Thirty years on, Rural Youth now owns Quercus Park, the Agfest site at Carrick. The event attracts more than 65,000 people over three days in the first week in May each year. It is one of the biggest single events on the Tasmanian calendar; and it is entirely run by a volunteer army of motivated and organised Rural Youth members and supporters.

Those people who started the original Agfest include Noel Beven, now a TFGA director, and another TFGA stalwart, Cressy farmer Rob Bayles. Rob’s daughter Amanda is the current president of Rural Youth, and hence leader of the team that runs Agfest. Amanda is also contesting the national ploughing championships at Inverell in NSW in a few weeks. In my business, we call that pedigree.

Farming is a $2 billion a year business in Tasmania. We produce some of the best food and fibre products in the world and there is a feeling of confidence and expectation of where agriculture can go over the coming decades. There are many opportunities on our doorstep; and we are on the cusp of a revolution that will see our industry become the pre-eminent wealth and job creator for the state. The roll-out of irrigation, the availability of new technologies like Sense-T, the growing demand for quality food and fibre products in Asia are all exciting markers to that future.

Agfest is where our industry comes together each year, and where we can share our excitement and showcase the best and brightest.

So get in your car and head off to Carrick this week. It will and open your eyes to what is going on in the real world of Tasmanian agriculture, the good news stories.

And, if you have a really fundamental question about farming that you have never been game to ask – like, how does a pivot irrigator work or how do you artificially inseminate cows – then wander along to the TFGA pavilion on Fifth Avenue and have a chat with a farmer. They love to talk about the things they do every day that deliver the fabulous food, wine and other farm products that we all take for granted.
TFGA CEO Jan Davis’ Mercury column today