Founded in an age when there was no Government departmental input into agriculture, the Society, along with its private landowners, scientists and individuals in politics and public affairs, made a remarkable contribution to the development of farming practices and other aspects of the rural economy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Promotion of Agriculture is and always has been the raison d’etre of the Society and, thus, of its Shows. That objective, in turn, has embraced the whole spectrum of economic, technical, social, cultural and educational improvement to rural life and the nation’s rural economy.