Montana Seed Show considering changes as attendance remains depressed

Another Montana Seed Show has come and gone this past weekend, and while many enjoyed the long running event in 2024, it saw another year of depressed turnout that has caused its leadership to consider changes, should the trend continue.

The long-unning event originally brought local potato farmers together to compare their crops, but has evolved into a mainstay event in northern Montana, with a number of agricultural events, auctions, contests and more, including a pie contest, bread contest, art show and exhibits covering subjects like woodworking.

The show also has a number of other educational and commercial booths, a quilt show, an art show, a classic car show and a pancake supper, all culminating in an awards ceremony that takes place before takedown begins at 4 p.m. on the last day.

However, this year, takedown began a bit earlier than expected, with one of the last events of the afternoon starting earlier than usual.

Seed Show Chair Paul Rasmussen said the turnout for the early afternoon was decent and they wanted to do their auction while the crowd was still big.

Rasmussen said they've had low attendance numbers the last few years, part of it a holdover from the pandemic, which caused them to cancel the 2021 show, and bad weather the years after that.

This year, he said, many of their events got decent turnout, with a good Quick Art Competition, and a decent number of hay and grain entries and auction attendees, but overall they had noticeably fewer exhibitors and general attendees overall.

He said he thinks this may just be an effect carried over from three years of depressed turnout, but he plans to do a better job of publicizing the event earlier next year.

"We just got to do a little better job," he said. "A couple of bad years kind of spoiled the punch... like a lot of things, we've kind of struggled to get the ball rolling again."

Indeed, next year will be the event's 75th anniversary, which Rasmussen said he hopes will draw a crowd and help get them out of this trend.

If it doesn't, he said, they will have to take a good, long look at the event, whether or not it is sustainable as it is, and if not, what changes they will need to make.

He said a lot of sports teams are at state this weekend, so moving the date back a week might help, something he was considering, but not able to do this year.

Despite the issue of attendance, Rasmussen said, he wants to let people know they have no intention of letting the event stop, but next year will be something of a litmus test to see if they need to reconsider how they do things.