‘Shot out of a cannon:’ Agribition draws largest crowd since 2005

As Canadian Western Agribition (CWA) started its 53rd annual general meeting Wednesday, it touted a successful 2023 event.

Officials of the Regina event said 142,807 people attended through the week last year, the most since 2005.

“We were fortunate in that Mother Nature co-operated with us and we had good weather for the week, so that always helps with the number of visitors that come to the show,” CWA president Kim Hextall said.

Canadian Western Agribition president Kim Hextall is finishing her two-year term as president. (Daniel Reech/980 CJME)

The 2023 event featured nearly 1,300 international visitors from 69 different countries. That’s up from the 1,200 guests from 63 countries that visited in 2022.

Hextall is finishing her two-year term as president before a new one is elected during the AGM.

“It’s been great. The whole organization is a great one to be associated with. (It has) excellent people to work with and it’s always fun to be involved in agriculture,” Hextall said.

“Everyone loves Agribition, at least as far as I know, and people keep coming back. It’s the one place that you can come to each year and visit lots of people and you may only visit them once a year but you call them friends.”

Shaun Kindopp, CEO of Canadian Western Agribition, said the organization is constantly trying to recruit volunteers. (Daniel Reech/980 CJME)

CEO Shaun Kindopp said it was awesome to see as many international visitors and also said CWA continually travels to promote internationally.

Kindopp also said the exhibition recorded $75,000 in profit, down from $83,450 a year earlier.

“The special thing about Agribition is that people put the show above themselves,” Kindopp said. “I think that’s the secret sauce to it is the crew and the amount of passion and pride that goes into the event.”

Kindopp said CWA wanted to carry its momentum forward for 2024.

“Last year, we came out like we were shot out of a cannon a little bit, which is exciting,” he said. “We did a lot of new events (and) we’ve got a lot of new team members, so this year, we really want to focus on stability and perfecting a lot of the new events that we did last year.”

Some of the events he mentioned were golf tournaments and the Canadian animal AGTech Awards.

Kindopp said CWA is constantly recruiting volunteers, which is important as it has many older volunteers and crew members. He said topics like risk mitigation and ensuring longevity are issues that were to be addressed during the AGM.

He also said Agribition wants to ensure there is knowledge sharing between the older and younger generations.

“(We want to) be able to deliver a lot more value back to our volunteers and back to our supporters as thank you’s and different ways that we can incentivize people to come and be a volunteer at Agribition,” he said.