Celebrating Ag at the Illinois State Fair 

Hats off to the Illinois State Fair for putting the focus squarely on agriculture in its 2015 theme announcement. 

State Fair Manager Patrick Buchen summed up his goal in a press release: “The state fair will still have all the traditions that Illinois families have come to love, but we want to bring a renewed focus of agriculture back to the Illinois State Fair.”

The “Growing Illinois” theme announced last week brings the state fair back to its farming roots, and provides the state’s farmers and ag industry with a chance to showcase modern agriculture.

Talk about an audience.  Last year’s attendance at the fair was nearly 919,000 people. That includes hundreds of thousands of city folks who come for the rides, midway games, butter sculptures and corn dogs, but who also get up close to the livestock, crops, machinery and – most important of all – the people who feed, fuel and clothe us.

It will be a great reminder to many Land of Lincoln residents that they live in one of the world’s most productive agricultural regions – in fact, one of the top five states in the USA for crop receipts – and that agriculture and food processing are a living, vital engine of the nation’s economy.

Check out these statistics on Illinois agriculture, and don’t miss the highlights, like the $19 billion in annual crop receipts or the $180 billion in processed food sales, much of which takes place in the Chicago area.

We like corn dogs, funnel cakes and shooting galleries as much as the next folks. But as a key supplier to the U.S. ag industry with our extensive line-up of Alliance brand farm tires, we really love seeing farmers get the respect they deserve. Well done, Illinois!