The Ploughing Championships offers traders in agricultural machinery to display their wares.
171 competitors are taking part in eight major competitions at this year's ploughing championships taking place in Edenderry, County Offaly. The event draws crowds of over 40,000 people over two days.
Hand in hand with the competitions, there are trade exhibitions offering machinery dealers to display their products to their target audience of farmers. This year, the trade exhibition space covered twenty acres with many potential visitors being turned away due to high demand.
The success of the ploughing exhibition, traders say, is the space to demonstrate their wears to farmers.
Paul Dunican says that farmers who are considering investing in new machinery come to see the machines demonstrated. He believes that the location of the Ploughing Championships in a rural setting offers a better opportunity to display agricultural machinery than in a location like the RDS in Dublin. However, he looks forward to attending the annual Spring Show at the RDS and would encourage traders to support it and says that the Ploughing is not in competition with the Spring Show.
The Ploughing Championships offers traders an opportunity to sell their machinery to farmers from up and down the country who gather for the two day event.
One dealer says that in terms of enquiries about their products, they have had the most successful show for quite some time.
We'll be surprised if we don't do very well out of the show.
For the Ploughing Association, the ploughing competitions are main draw for visitors and say that trading at the event is secondary.
Their aim is to promote ploughing and for the farmers, it's a holiday.
Another attraction at the event was the JCB driving competition, which saw drivers delivering pints of stout to a mannequin.
An RTÉ News report broadcast on 14 October 1982. The reporter is Andrew Kelly.
