A ‘Showless’ Summer for Ag Retailers in 2020
June 1, 2020 On May 28, I received the email I had been expecting from the organizers of the annual Southwestern Fertilizer Conference. “The SWFC Executive Committee made the decision this week to cancel this year’s conference scheduled for July 19-23, in Denver,” said Executive Director Pat Miller in the email. “That decision was based on the nationwide uncertainty surrounding COVID-19. The conference’s past success and design allows the flexibility to base our decision solely on the health and safety of our participants, which has been and will continue to be, our primary focus.”
And with that, the last of the possible in-person events I tend to attend during the months of June and July was no more (InfoAg, another event usually held in July, has already been pushed back to mid-December). Truthfully, I had expected this to happen, but it still was something of a surprise to realize that in 2020, virtually no industry gatherings for agriculture will take during the first two months of summer.
Loading ...In a normal year, these summer events were always important places to catch up on industry trends, see old in-market friends, and find out about all the new products/programs coming up for the fall season in person. This year, however, because of state restrictions on large gatherings in combination with travel restrictions by individual companies, the entire industry will have to follow all these developments in the virtual space instead.
As for the rest of the year, the uncertainty in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic remains. At press time, several states had already cancelled their annual state fairs, including North Dakota and Minnesota. Many more Midwestern states – such as Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Missouri – are planning to make final decisions on holding these events over the next few weeks. Early fall events such as the Farm Progress Show (September 1-3) and the Farm Science Review (September 22-24) are likely to decide soon as well.
But no matter what happens from this point onward, 2020 will probably be remembered by many in the agricultural industry as “The Year Without a Summer Show Season.”
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