Taste, Waste and the New Materiality of Food by Bethaney Turner

Author:Bethaney Turner [Turner, Bethaney]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science, Environmental Science, Earth Sciences, Geography, Social Science, Human Geography, Agriculture & Food, Technology & Engineering, Food Science, General
ISBN: 9780429755194
Google: Cnp_DwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-11-16T03:09:57+00:00

Situating agricultural shows

Agricultural shows have been a focal point of my year for as long as I can remember. My maternal grandparents are life-long members of their local Show Society on the South Coast of NSW and my grandfather was regularly crowned best exhibitor in the horticultural section. His vegetable prowess saw him, surrounded by his garden, immortalised in a portrait on a bus shelter at the end of his street. The Show was integral to my grandparents’ lives as they grew up with the Societies providing a social hub for many in their small farming communities. Throughout my childhood, this connection to the community remained important to them and each year they devoted countless hours as volunteers to help organise and run the major two-day event as well as preparing their own entries. Us grandchildren were enlisted too, helping take entry fees ‘on the gate’, being encouraged to exhibit and the girls who lived locally being hounded to enter the Miss Showgirl competition.

Miss Showgirl is an enduring feature of Australian Agricultural Shows where young women compete against each other to represent the local area at the larger regional and state-based shows. The girls are usually judged on their achievements, goals and knowledge of the agricultural industry. They also dress up in fancy clothes, wear sashes and get driven around the eventing arena in glamorous cars. My mother is one of four sisters (not the preferred gender balance for dairy farmers at the time) and while they all refused to be ‘paraded around like cattle’ at the show, in the last years of my grandfather’s life my cousin Holly vied for the crown of Miss Showgirl. This sacrifice (and indeed it was!) is testament to the value my grandfather placed on the Show and the role he felt it played for the local community.

The significance of this local Show stretched out well-beyond the two days it was staged in early February. The Show Schedule, the document outlining all of the exhibition categories and the details of how the entries must be organised (for example: six pears, calyx intact), was the most thumbed book in my grandparents’ home. My grandfather planned his yearly planting and harvesting with an eye towards having the produce hit its peak at Show time. In true farmer style, he was always circumspect about his chances. The ‘conditions’ and ‘weather’ were invariably not in his favour. Yet, every year, successful exhibition at the show remained his goal. Severely crippled with arthritis up until his death, he spent time everyday tinkering in his garden, getting ready for the show.

The first Australian Agricultural Show was held in Hobart in January 1822, shortly after the establishment of the Van Diemen’s Land Agricultural Society on the 8 December 1821. In the following decades, agricultural societies were established across the Australian colonies with their shows often becoming one of the first community events organised in newly settled towns (Darian-Smith & Wills, 1999). The first agricultural show in NSW, ‘the Parramatta Fair’, was

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