There weren’t any cows on display at the Nebraska State Fair on a warm afternoon last week, but visitors could walk through a huge empty barn where they had been a few days earlier. No horses or pigs, either, although there were some color photographs of the animals, if you knew where to look. And there was nary a giant farm combine anywhere to be found–just a few scattered tractors and riding mowers.
What there was to see in abundance was fading and peeling paint, decrepit buildings, cracked sidewalks and stultifying educational exhibits with all the multimedia pizazz of a 1950s-era school filmstrip.
The Nebraska State Fair, a 136-year-old tradition in this heartland agricultural state, is bankrupt and dying, like a lot of the small family farms it is supposed to celebrate. The gates will swing shut for the final time when this year’s fair closes on Labor Day, unless Nebraskans approve a November referendum to resuscitate it with an infusion of lottery funds.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if the fair shuts down, although it would make me sad,” said Ed Oliver, a 77-year-old retired machinist, whose display of miniaturized carnival rides was largely being ignored last week. “There’s so much other stuff for people to do nowadays. When I was young, you came here and made a day of it, brought a picnic lunch. Now people are kind of bored when they come here–especially the young people.”
What ails the Nebraska State Fair are some of the same troubles afflicting much of rural America: an aging and dwindling population, increasing agricultural concentration, shrinking state budgets and competition from the myriad attractions urban areas have to offer.
From 1997 to 2002, Nebraska lost more than 5,000 farms, a decline of 9.5 percent, according to the U.S. Census of Agriculture. Nebraska dairies declined from 1,240 in 1994 to just 456 this year, according to the Nebraska Farmers Union. The fallout from those statistics has hit the state fair like a whack-a-mole.
“When you keep putting dairy producers out of business, there are fewer dairy cows and fewer kids that have dairy as a 4-H project when mom and dad don’t milk cows,” said John Hansen, president of the farmers union.
A true farm state
But in a quintessential farm state that boasts of producing one of every five hamburgers and steaks consumed in America, the fair’s most ardent supporters are not ready to give up.
“Our fair has been not very good for 20 years. I’m 34, and that’s pretty much my entire lifetime,” said Kristine Gale, who is leading the campaign to get the fair funding referendum approved. “We had to ask Nebraskans, `Do you care if we survive?’ The answer was pretty lukewarm. We have to explain to people why they should care.”
One important reason is history, said Chuck Hassebrook, executive director of Nebraska’s Center for Rural Affairs, an advocacy group for small farms.
“Historically, the state fair has been an event that celebrated our agricultural heritage,” Hassebrook said. “You went to fairs and saw livestock and crops and kids’ 4-H projects, farm machinery and things like that. But in recent years, the Nebraska State Fair has gotten away from that and gone to big entertainment acts.”
Not too big, however: This year’s headliners were aging rockers REO Speedwagon and Cheap Trick.
There were still many traditional attractions at the fair, though in diminished quantities. Farm kids still displayed livestock they’d raised; quilters competed for blue ribbons, and display cases were filled with prize-winning cookies, cakes, preserves and pickled tomatoes. A 403-pound pumpkin was a popular draw–and the cattle-herding competition featured wholesome farm-family values: One competitor was disqualified for uttering a swear word.
“Watch your language,” a judge warned. “There are children here.”
But such mainstay farm animals as cattle, pigs and horses were shown on only a handful of days, rather than throughout the fair’s 10-day run. And all the exhibits and attractions were hobbled by the dilapidated facilities that housed them. Leaking roofs, broken windows and an absence of air conditioning plague nearly all the fairgrounds’ 72 buildings, the newest of which was built in the 1970s. There’s no money to repair the buildings so they could be rented throughout the year to generate additional revenue.
Fewer visitors
As the facilities deteriorated, so did attendance: in 1997, 389,000 visitors came to the fair, while last year the number was 238,000. The Nebraska Department of Agriculture lost interest years ago and stopped staffing a booth, returning this year only at the last minute. Professional livestock competitors dropped away as prize money was eliminated.
Most damaging was the loss of financial support from the state last year. The fair has been running a $200,000 annual loss for the last five years, and will end this year $500,000 in the hole, according to Joseph McDermott, the fair’s interim manager.
Other farm-state fairs enjoy substantial support from their state governments, McDermott noted ruefully: In the last five years, Iowa’s fair received $27 million from the state government, Kansas’ got $27 million.
The Nebraska fair’s last chance now lies with voters, who are being asked to approve a constitutional amendment that would divert 10 percent of the profits from the Nebraska Lottery to the state fair–about $2 million annually. Most of the lottery’s proceeds are now split among educational and environmental programs, but fair backers insist that those programs would not suffer any net loss because a new firm administering the lottery has promised to shave $2 million in annual operating expenses.
Yet supporters face another potential snag: The November ballot also will contain four other referendum questions seeking to expand casino gambling. If an anti-gambling groundswell develops, the state fair proponents fear they could be swept up in a deluge of “no” votes.
“There is so much potential here for a grand state fair,” Gale said as she displayed conceptual drawings of sparkling new fair buildings and crisp green fairgrounds. “It would be a shame if we have to kill it.”
