1 week Ago By Ancilla Ilave
THE Morobe Agriculture Show 2024 is expected to be bigger and even better than last year. The show, which started in 1969, is the largest annual event held in Lae. A two-day event that showcases life and achievements, especially against the backdrop of the province’s rich agricultural history, it brings visitors from all across the province and Papua New Guinea to Lae.
Essentially a festival, it showcases the wide variety of cultural, commercial, horticultural, school, agriculture, livestock, horse-riding displays from the locals, and general entertainment and amusement activities. There was a slight increase of sponsorship last year (2023), which the show society was happy because that meant more people came for the show. Bottom line, more people, bit of extra revenue so it’s expected to be better — even bigger this year than before.
Many repairs and maintenance were done in the showground to improve the infrastructure, with the money generated from last year’s ticket sales. The Show Society aims for further developments to the showground and to improve and have better facilities and to make the showground bigger. The standard of the stalls was excellent last year, which is no different to this year’s arrangement with all categories, schools, churches, NGOs, and government institutions, agricultural industries and manufacturing industries vying for the best stall prizes.
A record number of sponsors from corporate entities with new sponsors coming on board again this year, which illustrates that corporate sectors see value in the brand of being part of the Morobe show. There’s now a lot of value attached to being part of the show. “If you’re involved in the show, you come in and participate there.
“You know you’re going to do pretty well there, so that means that more and more sponsors mean to come on board, they want to get more exposure and become more involved with the show,” Mike Quinn said. Deputy Prime Minister John Rosso, who is also the Member for Lae, opened the show last year (2023) and the committee hopes he can grace the show again for this year’s opener. The show is expected to be a trouble-free weekend, with a joint security force operation by police, defence, Correctional Services, and a few private security firms to support the show security on the ground, both inside and outside of the showground area.
For major entertainment, there’s the motorbike stunts, fireworks display is expected to start the show this afternoon and finish on Sunday afternoon. Parachute jumpers are the other highlight, the parachutes and the monster flags, which is very popular because people like seeing them come down, and they are very special, the PNG flag, and two of the major sponsors, Coca-Cola and Trukai..
