In an era when a farmer can watch an equipment demo on YouTube, compare seed varieties on a smartphone app, and download a full market outlook report without leaving the cab of a combine, it would be easy to assume that the agricultural trade show has outlived its usefulness. Tanner Winterhof, co-host of the Farm4Profit podcast, spent early February 2026 at two of the biggest events on the ag calendar and came away more convinced than ever that the opposite is true.
The back-to-back stretch started at NCBA CattleCon in Nashville, which set an all-time attendance record with more than 9,400 cattle producers and industry stakeholders, and continued at the 60th National Farm Machinery Show in Louisville, where approximately 300,000 attendees filled 1.2 million square feet of exhibit space at the Kentucky Exposition Center. Neither event showed any sign of an industry ready to go fully digital.
The Numbers Tell the Story
The scale of these two events makes the case on its own. CattleCon 2026 drew attendees from across the country to downtown Nashville for three days of conversations about market trends, technology, and policy priorities. The record turnout reflected what Winterhof saw firsthand on the show floor—real passion and dedication in the beef community to grow demand, exchange ideas, and build relationships that strengthen the industry’s future.
Days later in Louisville, the National Farm Machinery Show Circuit marked its 60th anniversary with a showing that underscored just how far the event has come. From 86 exhibitors in 1966, NFMS has grown into the world’s largest indoor farm show Circuit, drawing farmers and ag professionals from as far as Australia and the Netherlands. The Championship Tractor Pull in Freedom Hall sold out Friday and Saturday sessions, with nearly 200 of the best tractor and truck pullers from across the U.S. and Canada competing in the nation’s oldest indoor tractor pull.
These are not the numbers of a dying format. They are the numbers of an industry that still values gathering in person—and that has its reasons.
What a Screen Cannot Replace
Winterhof has long argued that trade shows offer something digital content simply cannot replicate. While digital platforms provide massive reach, they lack the immediacy and warmth of in-person interaction. On a screen, engagement is typically one-sided—creators share content, followers consume it, often without any direct, real-time connection. Likes and comments are valuable, but they do not carry the same weight as a handshake and a face-to-face conversation.
At both CattleCon and NFMS, Winterhof and the Farm4Profit team experienced that dynamic in real time. At CattleCon, the CattleFax Outlook Seminar gave attendees a front-row seat to expert analysis on how tight supplies and strong demand are shaping cattle market fundamentals in 2026—the kind of nuanced, interactive session that a PDF report or recorded webinar cannot match. At NFMS, live equipment demonstrations let farmers put their hands on tools and ask pointed questions of the engineers who built them. As Winterhof has noted, there is no substitute for seeing new equipment in action and getting hands-on experience before committing hard-earned money.
Then there is the networking. Farming can be a solitary vocation—fields that define a producer’s life can feel like oceans between them and their neighbors. Trade shows collapse that distance. At NFMS, the networking ranged from booth conversations and hallway run-ins to late-night industry discussions. At CattleCon, Farm4Profit listeners and fans showed up to put faces to the names they hear on the podcast every week. Those moments—casual, unscripted, impossible to manufacture online—are what turn a professional contact into a lasting relationship.
A Perspective Built on Experience
Winterhof’s conviction about the value of in-person events is not theoretical. It is rooted in the story of how Farm4Profit itself came to exist. Growing up on a swine and row-crop farm in Aurelia, Iowa, he went into banking after college and spent 15 years in the profession. When he needed to build a loan portfolio in a new community, he launched the Ames Ag Summit in 2014—a conference designed to connect himself with the experts and thought leaders in agriculture. By the fourth year, the event had grown to over 400 attendees.
When the logistics of scaling a multi-day conference became unwieldy, Tanner pivoted those speaker relationships into a podcast in 2019. But the core insight from those conference years never left: the most valuable conversations in agriculture happen when people are in the same room. That belief now drives Farm4Profit’s entire trade show strategy, from the Farm Progress Show and Iowa Ag Expo to NFMS and, for the first time in 2026, CattleCon.
Digital and In-Person Are Not Competitors
What Farm4Profit’s February run illustrates is that the question is not whether digital or in-person is better—it is how the two work together. Winterhof and his team recorded 23 podcast interviews across the two events, sitting down with industry leaders at partner booths hosted by John Deere, Brandt Industries, and Performance Livestock Analytics. Those interviews will fuel weeks of digital content, reaching an audience that has grown to more than 400,000 followers across platforms, over 3.5 million episode downloads, and 55 million YouTube views.
The live event generates the raw material. The digital platform amplifies it. Neither works as well without the other. A podcast interview recorded from a home studio with a scheduled guest delivers solid content. That same interview recorded on the floor of the world’s largest indoor farm show Circuit, with the noise and energy of 300,000 attendees in the background, carries a different kind of authenticity—one that listeners can hear.
The partnership model reinforces this dynamic. At CattleCon, John Deere—which won the Large Booth of the Year award—hosted Farm4Profit alongside Performance Livestock Analytics. At NFMS, the team set up at both the John Deere and Brandt Industries booths for daily recordings. These arrangements give the podcast professional recording space in exchange for the foot traffic and audience association that a media brand with Farm4Profit’s reach brings to a booth. It is a model that benefits the brands, the podcast, and the attendees who get to watch the conversations happen live.
The Case for Showing Up
Winterhof has described winter trade shows as a goldmine for anyone willing to listen and observe. The February 2026 circuit—from Nashville’s record-breaking CattleCon to the 60th anniversary of NFMS in Louisville—proved the point. The educational sessions delivered insights that online research alone cannot match. The live demonstrations answered questions farmers did not even know they had. The hallway conversations opened doors that no algorithm could predict.
Agriculture is fundamentally a community endeavor, and trade shows remain one of the few places where that community assembles under one roof. In a digital world that offers endless information but limited connection, the farm show circuit still delivers something that no platform can—the shared energy of an industry that shows up, shakes hands, and gets to work on the future together. For Winterhof and Farm4Profit, that is reason enough to keep hitting the road.
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