Royal Ulster Agricultural Society president John Henning speaks to reporter Nathan Hylands ahead of this year's Balmoral Show which kicks off on Wednesday, 15th May and runs until Saturday, 18th May. Thousands of people are expected to attend this event which is the largest agricultural show in Northern Ireland.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 The RUES has been around for 170 years and this year we celebrate our 155th Balmoral Show.
00:09 So to be just the 37th President is quite an honour.
00:14 I've been involved in the Society in all sorts of ways for quite a number of years.
00:20 I think I attended my first show in the 60s.
00:24 I joined the Society in the late 70s, became a member of Council in 1995.
00:31 So you could sort of say that the RUES has been a big part of my life for quite a long time.
00:38 I think it is an important part of the agricultural industry.
00:47 But by the same token there probably are a lot of people that maybe don't fully realise that the Royal Australian Agricultural Society organise the Balmoral Show.
00:57 It's one of the many events that we host here at Balmoral Park and in the facilities that we have, the ICON and so on.
01:06 So I suppose maybe part of my job is to create greater awareness of what the RUES is and what it does.
01:15 We're certainly very keen to encourage new members to the Society and particularly newer, younger members joining us.
01:26 Because obviously younger members of the Society will be the future.
01:31 In terms of what will I bring, I think probably at the end of the day I'll leave that for history to judge what I've contributed.
01:42 Certainly my involvement with the Society over the length of time that I have been involved has been very much about doing a job, getting stuck in and trying to make the Society and its events bigger and better.
02:01 And in the case of the Balmoral Show, it's very much about educating and entertaining the public so that we bridge that gap between farmer and consumer.
02:12 So I suppose you could say the Balmoral Show is in the edutainment business where we educate people by entertaining them.