Agriculture This Week - Nostalgic for ag at summer fairs

This is not the first time I have written about how nostalgic I can become while attending the Yorkton Exhibition.

 

The summer fairs; Saskatoon, Yorkton, Melfort, Golburn, Invermay, Shand and others were essentially my combination summer camps and family holidays, from the time I was five until I was past my teens.

 

That was starting in 1965, and continuing to the mid-1980s, which was a decidedly different time when looking at what summer fairs across the Canadian Prairies was all about.

 

In those long ago years summer fairs were largely agriculture events, first and foremost, with producers bringing out their best stock to be judged against the best of neighbours and friends. With the competition of the show ring came equal amounts of camaraderie in the barns before and after the judge rendered their verdict on who would take home the red ribbons.

 

In those days there were red ribbons for just about everything farmers raised on what were largely mixed farm operations. As a result, while predominantly showing pigs, over the years I won ribbons showing a friend’s calves in junior beef classes, took mom’s chickens to Shand Fair, showed dairy goats, sheep, grain sheaves, and even held the halter on an occasional draft horse in group classes to help out.

 

But as I sat in the grandstand last week watching the rodeo, the barns I once ferreted around as a youth in the distance, there was a sense of loss at the fair.

 

While a vibrant Regional 4-H Beef Show remains part of the Yorkton fair, and light horses have returned after a time when they too had disappeared from the fair agenda, agriculture maintains barely a toehold at the fair.

 

It is of course a change that has corresponded to farms continuing to grow larger, and in that process more specialized. With that comes less time to take stock to fairs, and in some cases, pigs among them, growing concern over the potential of disease spreading at such events.

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.