Weather makes Farm World

Amazing weather and new attractions saw nearly 40,000 people flock to Lardner Park's Farm World event last week.
Larder Park chief executive officer Craig Debnam called the four-day agricultural show an "outstanding success."
Thousands of people flocked to the park from Thursday to Sunday to meet with farming and agriculture exhibitors from all over Australia and witness exciting events and attractions.
Almost 10 months of planning by event organisers paid off, with Saturday setting a Farm World record.
Mr Debnam said the good weather and Saturday night's rodeo were some of the key contributors to ticket sales.
"We haven't seen attendance like that for the last decade… it was amazing," he said.
"The weather over the entire event was just phenomenal."
The rodeo was one of the show's most popular events. It made its Farm World debut on Saturday night in front an an excited crowd of livestock enthusiasts and farming families. Mr Debnam said the event was so popular it had sold out by Friday evening and gates had to be opened early on account of "massive" crowd numbers.
"I haven't had one person say they didn't enjoy themselves," Mr Debnam said.

 He said the first ever Rodeo was a learning experience for event organisers and explained that there are plans to expand the popular attraction in coming years.
"It will grow, there's no doubt," he said.
"We will be making it probably like a 5000 capacity event for next year... it was hugely successful."
Other popular events included the Freestyle Kings Motocross show, Stegg Civil's spray drone demonstrations, and the Young Farmer Challenge Victorian State Final.
The spray drone demonstrations were a highlight, Mr Debnam said.
"People were clearly interested in that technology and the innovation that it offers to the farming community," he said.
Despite the challenging couple of years experienced by many farming and agricultural businesses, many exhibitors approached the event with enthusiasm and had a good time.
"They looked so professional, and they did such an amazing job," Mr Debnam said.
"I hope they made lots of sales, created lots of sales leads and had some fantastic engagement with their customers – that is what the show is all about."
In recent years many exhibitors have been plagued by manufacturing delays – a challenged faced by businesses all over the world – however Mr Debnam said this did not stop most from taking on more customers and making the most of Farm World.
Unfortunately, some exhibitors from previous years were unable to make an appearance after being forced to close because of the pandemic.
"Seventy exhibitors that we dealt with pre-COVID don't exist anymore," Mr Debnam said.
"We feel horrible for those businesses that didn't survive."
Flooding in NSW and Queensland prevented about 15 to 20 businesses from attending.
The 'Need for Feed' Lions Club initiative also made an appearance at Farm Word, doing their bit to help flood affected livestock farmers.
"They had the big haybales on the truck and were trying to - and I think successfully - to raise donations of haybales to go up and feed stock that have been impacted by the floods," Mr Debnam said.
Other areas of the event that experienced a lot of traffic each day was the cattle corner and the livestock pavilion.
Mr Debnam said the overall response from attendees had been positive.
"I think they got good value for their ticket this year," he said.
"Clearly our message that Farm World is an agricultural field day, not a big market, is getting out there."