Opinion | Once an expo of farm progress, the Minnesota State Fair now celebrates consumption

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I have a long history with the Minnesota State Fair. It goes back more than 60 years now. That means the fair and the Agricultural Society that manages it were already over 100 years old when I started going. The Space Tower was new, and you could stand an hour in line to see the world from that special height. Changes came fast and furious from then until now.

There were five brands of tractor to climb aboard and imagine plowing and planting or baling hay with your red or green or yellow or orange or blue tractor on Machinery Hill. A century of farm inventions like plows and steam engines and mowers and reapers made appearances at the fair as fast as they occurred. I was there for the first 100-horsepower International tractor and to see John Deere’s 4020 for the first time.

There was the dairy barn, the swine barn, the beef barn, the sheep barn and its neighbor under the same roof, the chicken barn. Each held contests that were meant to improve the quality of those species of animal, with the goal of improving the profitability of farming. Pure breeds were developed and challenged at the State Fair. Animals whose offspring bred true to each breed’s strength, even chickens and ducks and geese.

The tractors are gone, replaced by zero-turn lawnmowers for New Age estate owners. Youth livestock competitions have replaced the breed shows in various barns. The improvement of the young adults in 4-H and FFA has replaced the herd and flock improvement that were the foundation of the State Agricultural Society.

Every street is now lined on both sides and down the middle with food booths. The church halls are still there, but they sell nostalgia along with roast meat, mashed potatoes, a vegetable, and homemade bread and pies that you sit down to eat. The vendors sell food to be held and eaten standing up. Everything you can imagine and things I can’t imagine are fried on a stick for easy eating and walking.

I really believe that the modern State Fair is a celebration of consumption, compared to the celebration of production and modernization that was the fair I first encountered. The contests are there, but the crowds come for the food on a stick. We gather and we celebrate and no one does it as well as the Minnesota State Fair. We probably should admit that we are a community of consumers. Some in the crowd still make things with their hands. But most of us are best at buying things and adding them to our collections.

We are who we are, and the State Fair is the best celebration of what is best of what we are.