Agricultural News
20th Annual Tulsa Farm Show Opens for Three-Day Run
Wed, 11 Dec 2013 22:17:40 CST
The 20th Annual Tulsa Farm Show gets underway Thursday at the River Spirit Expo Center in Tulsa. The doors open at 9 a.m. Thursday and Friday and close at 5 p.m. Saturday hours are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
John Sampson of Midwest Farm Shows has been one of the movers and shakers behind the Tulsa show for its 20-year run- serving as the Marketing Director for Midwest Farm Shows, who owns and operates the Tulsa Farm Show, The Southern Plains Farm Show in Oklahoma City each April and a half dozen more Farm Shows around the country. He spoke with Radio Oklahoma Network's Ron Hays recently about what he's seen over the years. (You can listen to the full conversation by clicking on the LISTEN BAR at the bottom of this story.) With each passing year, the show has evolved and grown, he says.
"In the first show, I believe, we used 66,000 square feet which sounds like a lot, but not when you're in a building that has 480,000 square feet."
Sampson said this year's show almost fills the entire venue and they have 366 vendors as opposed to 70 their first year.
"It's been fun to build it," he says. "It's been a growth process. And because of the facility and the good media support that we get around here, by golly, we've been able to build a pretty successful show."
The Tulsa Farm Show is unique in that all the exhibitors are totally inside a single building, making it a very pleasant show for visitors, rain or shine. Of the seven venues used by Midwest, Tulsa's is by far the largest and allows them to perform horse clinics and demonstrations with livestock indoors.
This year's show will again feature horse trainer Craig Cameron. Sampson says he's especially proud of his relationship with Cameron this year as he's just completed his First Annual Guts and Glory Ride. Cameron uses the ride to raise funds for veterans who need assistance with a variety of problems that can include anything from financial challenges to serious health issues and physical wounds.
"They need our help and thanks for their service and it's great that Craig is doing that," Sampson says.
Another long-running feature of the show still gets Sampson's personal touch.
"One of my pet projects is still Friday's stock-handling skills competition for ten teams of three kids. A bunch of great kids are going to come in and show us they know how to handle cattle and we will be awarding scholarships."
Sampson says they have awarded over $100,000 in scholarships over the years to students in Oklahoma. The scholarships are meant to encourage students seeking post-secondary education in agriculture.
Another feature of the Tulsa Farm Show is the daily $1,000 giveaway of credit that can be used at any of the show's exhibitors.
Not only is the show widely known in the Tulsa area, but, Sampson says, crews from RFD-TV will be on hand to broadcast from the show giving it national attention.
"It's just part of our overall growth situation that has been very satisfying over the years," he says.
Tulsa is the second show on Midwest's calendar, having been preceded by the show in Peoria, Illinois. Sampson said attendees in Peoria seemed to be especially pleased with new equipment technologies that were on display that have become more user-friendly over the years.
Sampson said that the overall attitude of attendees was optimistic about the near-term profitability of agriculture, but they did have some concerns over a drop in ethanol usage which, coupled with high yields, has dropped the price of corn.
Livestock producers are also optimistic, Sampson said, with plenty of room for growth in the nation's cow herd.
He says he has learned a lot over the years by producing shows in Oklahoma. One of the most interesting, he says, is the diversity of crops grown in the state.
"You have a much more diverse crop mix down here than we have up there. You do sod. You do pecans. You do cotton. You do peanuts a lot of things we didn't know anything about 20 years ago when we came down here because you can go for miles and miles in Illinois, Iowa and the Dakotas and not see anything but corn and soybeans. If you get far enough north you might see a sunflower or two. Other than that, this has been a learning experience for us over the years for us to tailor the show to the needs of all those folks and try to have some things in there that deal with all the different areas of ag production that we encounter down here and it's been really interesting and enlightening for me to come down here and see what is going on."
More information about the show including lists and locations of exhibitors and demonstrations times are available online at: http://tulsafarmshow.com/
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