ABOUT 200,000 people are expected to converge on Athy, Co Kildare, this week as it hosts the 80th National Ploughing Championships.
The event, which will run from tomorrow until Thursday, is the largest of its kind in Europe, with visitors and competitors coming from many countries.
It is the third successive year that the championships will be held in Athy, where an opening parade takes place tonight at 7pm.
The event gets under way tomorrow, with exhibitions opening at 9am. The ploughing competitions begin shortly afterwards before the official opening by President Mary McAleese at noon.
“Preparation have been going very well. We have been very fortunate with the weather. Often that can be more important than the events. If there is damage to the ground it can be hard to rectify,” said Anna Marie McHugh, of the National Ploughing Association.
The event site comprises 400 acres of car parking space, 200 acres for the ploughing competitions, 80 acres for trade/stand exhibitors and an area of some 25 acres for demonstrations.
Organisers estimate that the championships will generate in excess of €10 million for the local economy.
“Agriculture is one of the only parts of the economy that is looking well at the moment I think and that is obvious on the ground here,” said Ms McHugh.
New to this year’s championships will be the introduction of an innovation award for the technology on show that best suits Irish farming methods.
The championships will also host the first All-Ireland pole climbing competition, where competitors from Great Britain and Ireland will attempt to pull themselves to the top of the 80ft poles in the fastest time.
Another new addition will be The Husqvarna Axe Factor where axe men will carry out speed and skill trials cutting timber.
Some 327 competitors have entered the various ploughing categories, with the highlight competition likely to be the World Championship Ploughing Challenge.
Entrants in the challenge must have been placed either first, second or third in a world ploughing championships to gain entry, thereby guaranteeing high quality action in the bid to collect from the €10,000 prize fund.
To mark the 80th anniversary, organisers have revived some of the older elements of the championships that they have “let slip during the years”, said Ms McHugh.
One such element is the innovators tent which makes a return after a number of years absence, while the field that staged the inaugural ploughing championships in 1931 will be part of this year’s event site.
Ms McHugh added that a “through-the-ages demonstration” of ploughing methods will also take place. This will involve small plots of land being ploughed in the manner in which they would have been in past decades. The vintage machinery that will be used in these demonstrations will be left on the ploughed plot afterwards for visitors to see up close.