Portales Ag Expo officials looking for new ideas

PORTALES — The Portales Ag Expo, at least as we’ve known it for the past quarter century, will never come back.

At least that’s the view from Roosevelt County Extension Agent Patrick Kircher.

The expo, which was typically held in late March, ran for 25 years, providing information on farm and ranch equipment as well as educational seminars for area producers.

Officials said in February that the event was suspended indefinitely, citing a changing agriculture business.

Kircher said that for the expo to ever return, it would need ideas that could draw vendors and crowds, both of which have been lacking for the past three to four years.

“I really think it would take somebody more innovative than myself to put a new spin, a new twist, a new direction, a new draw on it to make it work again,” he said.

The primary reason for the decline in attendance was the internet, which wasn’t an option for consumers when the expo began in the early 1990s, Kircher said.

“It was pre-internet, pre-all that, so you had to be there to physically touch it, see it, talk to somebody. That’s what was unique about it,” he said, adding that a thriving dairy industry also increased the demand for an event that showcased agriculture products.

“The dairy industry around here has really kind of leveled off at a maintenance level now, so there’s not a lot of growth in businesses that support the industry. It’s kind of established where it is,” he said. “The other side of it, and this is a natural trend, agriculture producers as a whole are aging in this country, so there’s not near as many new producers out there as there once were.”

A highly successful component of the expo was the educational seminars, something Kircher said will live on in an event called the High Plains Crop and Livestock Symposium, the first incarnation of which took place on Feb. 22.

Kircher said the event, which had “a really great turnout,” will continue where the Ag Expo left off.

However, he still has fond memories of the positive impacts the event had on Roosevelt County.

“In the beginning years of the expo, it really did make a big financial impact. There were lots and lots of vendors that came from out of state that stayed in hotels, bought gas here, bought meals here, lots of attendees that came from the greater High Plains area. There was a lot of economic draw that came to it, as well as the other job it had, of disseminating information to agriculture producers in the area,” he said.

Sue Disney, who served on the Ag Expo board in the 1990s and chaired it twice, recalled most fondly the people she worked with.

“It was a very diversified group. We had people from the university, we had agricultural people, we had business people. Just so many ideas coming from different walks of life,” she said.

The economic impact of the expo in those days, as Disney recalled, was vast, with visitors “coming in from all over the area.”

“Of course, they have to eat, they have to put fuel in their vehicles, they have to have some place to stay,” she said.