Virtual format a challenge for Farm Show vendors

Click here for updates on this story

    HARRISBURG, Pa. (WPMT) — Because the 2021 Pennsylvania Farm Show has gone virtual, its outsized economic impact will likely be dampened this year.

For 105 years the Farm Show has been drawing crowds.

“Through good times and bad. Through feast and famine and war and peace and now, a pandemic,” said Pennsylvania Secretary of Agriculture Russell Redding in a Farm Show Facebook post.

Each year the Farm Show usually generates $90 million in economic activity and sees more than half a million people visitors.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, the show is taking a year to lie fallow.

While some activities moved online, many others were canceled.

Hotels and restaurants that usually host visitors may be the likeliest to lose business due to the show moving online.

In addition, with no public activities at the Farm Show Complex, the hundreds of vendors who depend on Farm Show profits will not be able to sell in-person this year.

“We do several smaller craft shows throughout the year, we do a lot of online and wholesale sales with our business, but Farm Show we reach the most people and sell the most product,” said Andrew Miller, who, along with his wife Ashley, owns Honeybee Creations in Lancaster County.

Despite having sold at the Farm Show for more than 15 years, the couple said they understood why it had to go virtual.

“We were kind of heartbroken that we wouldn’t be there, but we had concerns about being there and obviously contracting the coronavirus,” Ashley Miller said.

The Farm Show has taken several measures to help vendors sell goods online this year. They created the Pennsylvania Farm Show Trail, a map of vendors across the state with links to their websites.

“Those that have online sales have really been able to pivot and adapt their business model so that they can continue to reach their customers and we are working to help them do that,” said Shannon Powers, press secretary for the Department of Agriculture.

Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.