Over 100,000 people attend the annual Fieldays at Mystery Creek Photo: Stephen Barker
After nearly six decades, Fieldays has evolved from a place where farmers can get their shoes shined to a place where the latest innovations take centre stage
When Fieldays first kicked off in Te Rapa 57 years ago, farmers could get their boots shined.
Those days are over, but it is still the place where farmers go to dream. And spend. And watch competitions like the tractor pull.
It is the place you can buy a tractor for $500,000, or get the latest in rural fashion.
More than 1000 exhibitors from drone makers to kiwifruit leather inventors are at the largest rural expo in the Southern Hemisphere to sell their products, do commercial deals or simply introduce their products and services to the crowds.
Despite the concrete paths, gumboots were a popular choice of footwear at the 2025 Fieldays Photo: Davina Zimmer
Retired dairy farmer Mike from Ōhaupō in Waikato has only missed one Fieldays, when he was in London.
He tells The Detail how he has watched the event grow from its agricultural roots.
"We were always dreaming to get ahead. It's a different sort of show now," he says.
"You'd go and polish your boots, but that's gone because it would cost them big money to have a stall here."
But one feature that's lasted for the past five decades is the tractor pull.
Tractor pull organiser and champion Dan Reymer says heavy rain has made this year's track difficult, a real test of the drivers' skills.
Daniel Reymer with The Detail's Sharon Brettkelly Photo: Davina Zimmer
"It's the slowest and hardest we've ever seen," he says.
"It's the same as the paddock and the farm: you have to adapt your machine to suit the conditions."
When this "tractor and machinery nut" is not pulling slabs of concrete in a race, he is out checking the new machinery.
But with prices in the hundreds of thousands, he doesn't dare dream of buying anything.
He says that the family contracting business just spent "over a mil" on a new harvester.
At the Polaris stand Andrew Simpson, aka 'Simmo', is demonstrating a new light utility vehicle, commonly known as a side-by-side.
"This is my sandpit," he says as he steers it up a steep track.
Simpson runs a training business that teaches people how to safely operate farm vehicles, some of which have been responsible for a number of farm deaths and accidents.
"There's still deaths happening. It's not just quads but also side-by-sides. But with these we've got roll protection, we've got seatbelts. So that's one of the key things, we've got to wear a seatbelt because if we were to tip it over and we got chucked out that would kill us.
Tractors raced each other pulling concrete blocks weighing several tonne. Photo: Davina Zimmer
"Historically we've seen that happening, people don't wear their seatbelts, or they take their doors off, they take their nets off ... and they expose themselves to a lot more risk."
The Detail also talks to two Chinese businessmen who are looking for new customers for their agrochemicals.
They say there is nothing like Fieldays in China for basic farmers, and it is difficult to describe what it is like to people back home.
"It's amazing. This experience is something you can only imagine."
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