Jamie Mackay: The Country host ahead of Fieldays 2025

The Country's Jamie Mackay is off to Fieldays - and he's feeling hopeful ahead of this year's event.

Farmers are in a better state of mind this time round, and it's expected this community-wide enthusiasm will shine through at the event.

Jamie Mackay explained further.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Jamie McKay hosted the Countries with us a Jamie good I, Heather,
you're in a car. Are you in a car on
the way to Field Days?

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Yes, I am in a car. I'm sorry if there's
a bit of road noise, but we can't afford to
stop because it's taken us about an hour from the
airport to get to tack In Inny, and then we're
heading down to the tron. We've got a bit of
a dinner date down there tonight ahead of three days
of broadcasting at Field Days.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Are you expecting, I mean, I expect that Field Days
is going to be reasonably upbeat, isn't it With all
of the prices that are being paid at the moment.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
I think it might even be better than that, To
be perfectly honest, Heather, I think this has been a
good year for nearly all, well most farming classes put
it that way. But I think the icing on the
cake was the budget announcement. I think we talked about
this one last week of the investment tax boost. So basically,
if you're buying a big ticket item, you get another
twenty percent or effectively can claim another twenty percent of

(00:53):
depreciation in year one, it saves you a heck of
a lot of money. So look, I think for the
big ticket items it's going to be all on. There
could be cues at the track to stands.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
Who knows even know Aucklanders are coming down?

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Do me?

Speaker 1 (01:06):
Do very many people come down who are outside of
the rural world.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Oh yeah, yeah. Like if you compare this to say,
the Southern Field Days at Waimurmu, just outside of Gore,
it's nearly all farmers and rural folk. No. Look there,
there's lots of craft these sort of things there and
for people who aren't even interested in farming, twelve hundred
exhibitors either. It takes you know, it takes you two

(01:32):
or three days to get around the whole lot if
you were keen enough to do that. But you know,
I always love getting into for instance, the innovation. Well
it was not a stand, it's a building now and
you can go in there and look what farmers or
people who have rural clients have invented in the past
twelve months. And some of these go on to be
patented and become huge commercial successes. So that's always one

(01:55):
to look out for. And of course you've got the big,
big players there, the fonte errors and cos, the fertilizer companies,
the meat companies, and they're they're entertaining their clients, giving
them a bit of a free feed at Field Days.
It's very much about networking to be perfectly honest.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
Oh brilliant. Well listen, go and enjoy your dinner and
enjoy Field Days and we'll have a chat to you
again on Thursday and see how things are going. That's
Jamie McKay, host of the Country.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
For more from Heather Duplessy Allen Drive, listen live to
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