FORT WAYNE, Ind. – Fort Wayne Farm Show organizers said farmers and exhibitors are looking forward to this year’s show after the 2021 event was canceled due to the pandemic.

The show is Jan. 18-20 at the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum.

“I’m sure the show will be packed,” said Greg Lake, district director for the Allen County (Ind.) Soil and Water Conservation District. “I anticipate seeing a good-sized crowd because it’s been absent for a year. I get a feeling farmers will be anxious to get out and hit the show floor. It almost becomes a giant neighborhood meeting. People stop in the aisles to visit with each other, to catch up.”

Exhibitor space at the show has been sold out since the middle of June, said Dan Slowinski, a show director with Tradexpos, which produces the show. The current wait list is the most extensive in the show’s 30-plus year history, he added.

“Exhibitors are chomping at the bit, not only to sell products and services, but to get back to some normalcy,” Slowinski explained. “Exhibitors have been contacting us, saying, ‘please tell us you’re having a show.’”

The show will include 388 companies; 117 of those have been with the show for at least 20 years, he said. Fifty-eight exhibitors will be at the show for the first time.

A couple of equipment companies opted out because they didn’t have any inventory to exhibit, Slowinski said. He anticipates the same amount of equipment as at previous shows, but the equipment will be offered by a wider variety of companies.

Shows in 2019 and 2020 attracted more than 30,000 people over the three days, according to Tradexpos. Slowinski said he hopes to draw more visitors this year.

“I’m expecting over that, maybe over 35,000,” he stated. “I don’t think (weather) is going to stop them from attending.”

The first Fort Wayne Farm Show was in 1990. Jack Thill, then owner of Tradexpos, created the show after visiting Fort Wayne in the 1980s. The event’s primary goal was to draw as many people as possible into an agricultural event, Thill told Farm World in 2014. He died in 2015 at age 90.

Again, this year, a fundraising auction is scheduled to support the Indiana FFA Scholarship Foundation. The auction is 1 p.m. Jan. 18-19.

“The auction is one of those traditions people look forward to at the show,” Slowinski said. “People are very gung-ho about helping out FFA.”

Slowinski joined Tradexpos in November 2020 and later that year, the 2021 Fort Wayne show was postponed due to COVID-19. It was eventually canceled.

He said he’s looking forward to his first trip to the show and to Fort Wayne. “I get to grow all these relationships and continue this great tradition,” Slowinski noted.

The show is open 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Jan. 18, 9 a.m-8 p.m. Jan. 19 and 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Jan. 20. The event is free, but there is a fee to park in Coliseum lots. This year’s grand prize is a Toro 50-inch zero-turn lawn mower sponsored by Plevna Implement Co.

Tradexpos, based in Austin, Minn., also produces farm shows in Owatonna, Minn., and Mulvane and Topeka, Kan. The company will debut an outdoor show in Medford, Minn., in July 2022. For more information on the Fort Wayne show, visit www.tradexpos.com and click on “Fort Wayne Farm Show.”