Feature where we've been | PPC88 September 2017
Following a request from the Fumigation and Controlled Environments (FaCE) Forum, BPCA travelled to the village of Boothby Graffoe to take a stand at the technical agricultural event Cereals. We brought along members of the FaCE Forum to talk about all things fumigation.
Cereals is the self-described “leading technical event for the arable industry” and rotates between Boothby Graffoe in Lincolnshire and Duxford in Cambridge each year in June. The event takes place on a working farm with demonstration areas, crop plots and seminar tents alongside the exhibition stands.
Across two days, the event was attended by over 24,000 people including farm owners, agronomists, students from agricultural colleges and agricultural professionals – meaning that we got to speak to a variety of people to raise the profile of the professional pest management sector. And the sunshine helped to put a smile on everyone’s faces!
Supporting BPCA’s stand, Jim Kirk from Deadline said, “Promoting pest control services to agriculture is now more important than ever. Traditionally agriculture has largely conducted it’s own pest control – with a wide variance in standards.
“The stewardship schemes in place for key agriculture products like Phostoxin and Talunex, alongside the more recent implementation of stewardship guidelines for rodenticides, is making the option of outsourcing pest control much more attractive and viable to farmers. This is clearly an opportunity for professional pest controllers. It was great to see this being identified by the BPCA’s committee structure, put to the Board and then supported at such short notice.
“The Deadline team were delighted to support BPCA and our customers on the show stand – lets hope we see opportunities for BPCA members to increase the amount of work they conduct within the agriculture industry and improve the quality of pest control within this sector.”
Martin Cobbald, Owner of Dealey Fumigation and Chair of the FaCE Forum, commented, “The great benefit of attending Cereals was being able to reach customers directly. A lot of the show attendees don’t often venture past the farm gate so to see so many of them face to face and talk to them about fumigation was a considerable opportunity for our members.”
BPCA’s stand was located within the ‘crop protection’ area of the show due to the focus being on fumigation, however BPCA naturally received questions on the day about other areas of the pest management industry. Aside from fumigation we spoke about the CRRU Stewardship Scheme, qualifications for the use of aluminium phosphide, and recommendations for pest controllers (and our ‘find a pest controller’ tool).
It was great to see members working together to promote the industry, and it’s always fun attending a variety of shows with our members. Cereals was definitely a success for our members and relationships have been made that will hopefully bring in plenty of profit for all our members.
Putting an event forward for BPCA attendance
The FaCE Forum decided at its last meeting that it would like to raise the profile of the fumigation industry by attending the exhibition. This was put forward to BPCA’s Executive Board, which approved the attendance and plans began! All members of the FaCE forum were emailed about being involved in the stand and responses included sending along a member of the team to help on the day, to providing samples and literature to build up the stand’s appearance.
WHERE SHOULD WE GO?
If you have an event that you would like to see BPCA attend then speak to your committee members to get the ball rolling or email us...
Contact Events
Lauren Day
Events Manager
15 September 2017 | PPC88