Are turfgrass field days destined for the dust bin?

Our Wisconsin Turfgrass Association Summer Field Day is one of my favorite days of the summer. Held in the last week of July, it has been an annual event for 35 years.

The first one was a small affair – only a few exhibitors and a handful of attendees. In subsequent years, the field day was held at several different golf courses until if found a permanent home at our O.J. Noer Turfgrass Research and Education Facility.

The move to our research facility about 25 years ago resulted in long-term experiments, more demo areas for exhibitors and close proximity to faculty, grad students and campus. The field day matured and even morphed into a two-day event with booming attendance.

The field day serves many purposes. The primary focus is research. Turf pros of all stripes can walk on the plots, see the results and question faculty. Equipment exhibitors can meet with many customers at this single stop. Fungicide, herbicide, PGR and insecticide manufacturers and formulators can, in one day, see scores of customers.

Field days have been hugely positive events in every corner – sod, lawn care, golf course, sports fields and others. The WTA even used the field day to generate funds for turfgrass research. From native areas to instructions on how to paint Bucky Badger on a football field, the event was educational and fun. Another key to a satisfied crowd has been good food. Our food tent has been second to none.

A good part of the success of field days has been the social aspect of such an event. By late summer, superintendents, sod producers and most others were glad to see colleagues and learn what was news, what was working and how the season was going. Free hats, good friends and a colorful scene made it a really appealing day. We felt so good about it that we then developed a homeowner field day the day following the big field day. It was also well received.

Then something happened a while back. Attendance started to lag, we reverted back to a single-day event and the homeowner field day went by the wayside. During this time, we noticed that quite a number of people would stay through lunch and then leave almost immediately after to get back to the ranch and check on the turf. Our big equipment show became a tabletop show with no demonstrations.

A couple of weeks before this year’s field day, a good friend of mine, a turf formulator from out of state, told me field days were destined to disappear. “Too expensive,” he said.

He has a point. For an equipment distributor to load a flatbed with grass machinery, take salesmen off the road for a couple of days, food and house staff for two or three nights, there has to be a significant return despite the reduced attendance. And attendance has been reduced through company mergers in our industry.

Clearly, electronic devices have had an impact on communication among colleagues. Younger generations feel less of a need to experience eye-to-eye contacts, and field day attendance feels that. Bob Vavrek, a senior agronomist for the USGA Green Section, showed me a YouTube clip of a machine I had never heard of going through its paces on a golf course. It took five minutes under a shade tree – no travel and no expense to decide if I needed to see a live demo. Peculiar to Wisconsin is another limiting factor: the Department of Agriculture has no interest in extending any “point” system for attendance toward a pesticide certification or applicator license.

Despite significant changes, I think the good things about field days that have appealed to us for years still remain. The chance to walk on turf, to see friends and colleagues, to visit with faculty, to enjoy what is almost a picnic are still available and still draw people in. Maybe that is why we had a couple of hundred turfies at our field day this year. There will always be those who feel like I have felt for years – I have to go because I might miss something!

I don’t think field days are “headed for the dust bin of turfgrass history.” The professors involved in research may have to work even harder and with more creativity in terms of research and demo plots. The sponsoring organization may have to actually do some serious marketing. Maybe we need to have some flexibility to accommodate to some degree those traveling great distances. Potential might exist to attract professionals near the border areas of other states. Affordability must always be kept in sight. There are probably a dozen other major efforts that will have to be made.