For the first time in years, the country’s biggest farming showcase ran out of room. Fieldays 2026 sold out at Mystery Creek near Hamilton, with every one of its exhibitor sites taken and more than 1,100 companies crammed onto the site to sell everything from drones and combine harvesters to solar panels and million dollar tractors. The four day event, which ran from 10 to 13 June, drew tens of thousands of farmers to a booming rural sector that is now doing the heavy lifting for an economy still struggling in the cities.
The mood was a sharp turn from the gloom of recent seasons. Fieldays chief executive Richard Lindroos told RNZ the full house was a measure of how strong the primary sector had become. “It’s a testament to how strong agri-business is. Agri-business pays the rent and more for New Zealand,” he said. The number of international exhibitors also climbed, with 73 overseas firms taking sites this year against 66 in 2025, and trade and political figures from the United Kingdom, India and the European Union walking the grounds in an election year.
What makes this Fieldays unusual is that nearly every part of the farm economy is doing well at once. Special Agricultural Trade Envoy Nathan Guy pointed to the rare alignment of strong returns across dairy, red meat, horticulture and even the long suffering wool sector. “Let’s look back a couple of years in the red meat sector, it was very much the doldrums, farmers, particularly sheep farmers, weren’t making any money, now they are paying down debt, reinvesting inside the farm gate, and they are very optimistic about their future,” he said. Federated Farmers Meat and Wool chair Richard Dawkins struck a more cautious note, urging farmers to use the upturn wisely. “We need to use these good times to not only play a bit of catch up, reduce short term debt, you know catch up on deferred maintenance and things,” he said.
The numbers behind the optimism are real. Fonterra has lifted its forecast farmgate milk price for the 2025/26 season to a midpoint of $9.50 per kilogram of milk solids, in a range of $9.20 to $9.80, after a run of stronger results at the Global Dairy Trade auctions. A payout near that level pushes billions of extra dollars through dairy districts and into local garages, machinery dealers and main street shops. Beef and lamb prices have also held up, and the Ministry for Primary Industries expects food and fibre exports to reach a record of around $64.3 billion in the year to June, up from $60.4 billion the year before. After several years in which the rural sector carried heavy debt and watched commodity prices slide, the cash is finally flowing back through the farm gate.
That confidence sits awkwardly alongside what is happening in the rest of the economy. New Zealand manufacturing slipped back into contraction in May as weak demand and rising fuel costs squeezed factories, and the main centres have been shedding jobs across construction, retail and the public service. The Reserve Bank has held the Official Cash Rate at 2.25 percent and is now warning that a fresh oil price shock could push inflation back above its target band later in the year, which leaves households in the cities facing higher prices with little prospect of further rate relief. The result is a two speed country in which the paddocks are writing the cheques while the suburbs tighten their belts.
Even on the showground, the good times came with a sting. Several farmers told RNZ that the cost of running a farm was their biggest worry, even with strong prices. Drystock farmer Barry Loveridge, who was looking at solar systems to cut his power bill, described current fuel prices as “frightening”. Beef farmer Anita Nichol, who runs a 320 acre block, said fuel remained her main concern despite expecting conditions to keep improving. The same rising input costs that are biting urban households, from diesel to fertiliser, are eating into farm margins even as the income side of the ledger improves.
There is also a question of how long the run lasts. Much of the current strength rests on global commodity prices that New Zealand does not control, and a single bad season at the Global Dairy Trade or a downturn in key markets such as China could quickly cool the optimism on display at Mystery Creek. The export gains that the Ministry for Primary Industries has flagged are forecasts rather than money in the bank, and farm leaders at the event were openly encouraging their members to pay down debt and bank the gains rather than spend freely on the assumption that high prices are here to stay.
For now, though, the contrast is stark. While Auckland counts redundancies and watches its factories slow, the rural heartland turned out in force, opened its wallet and sold out the country’s biggest trade event. The booming farm economy is, for the moment, the engine keeping the wider recovery alive, and Fieldays 2026 was the clearest sign yet of where the money is being made.
What do you make of the gap between the farm economy and the cities? Are the good times in the regions reaching your town, or does it feel like two different countries right now? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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