10/16/2026
Today is World Food Day. This year’s theme is “Innovate today. Nourish tomorrow.” 🌾 Which is, more or less, the job description of an agricultural fair.
Markham Fair has been running since 1844. In all that time the point of it has never really been the midway, it’s been farmers bringing their best work to one place so everyone else can see how it was done. A prize table is a knowledge-transfer system with ribbons on it.
Swipe through and you’re looking at a food system:
Vegetables carried in and tagged for judging. A table of squash and pumpkin varieties in the Agri-Food Tent, most of which you will never see in a grocery store. Growers named on the cards beside the giants they grew. A Holstein in clean straw. A shearer showing a crowd how it’s done, the way it’s been shown here for a century. A straw bale with a hand-lettered sign telling you it weighs 440 kg and costs $50 — because knowing what farming actually costs is part of understanding food.
Then the last two. A kid at the controls of a new tractor, and a 4-H member in the ring with her heifer. The innovating and the nourishing, on the same grounds, in the same weekend.
Sustainable food systems don’t get built at a fall fair. But they do get taught at one.
