Shapiro Administration Announces 2026 Pennsylvania Farm Show Theme: ‘Growing a Nation’

Oct 06, 2025

Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding announced the 2026 Pennsylvania Farm Show theme, “Growing a Nation” at historic Wyck House Farm and Garden in Philadelphia. The 2026 Farm Show Pennsylvania’s State Fair™ will kick off a year of America250PA special events and celebrations bringing millions of visitors to the Commonwealth recognizing Pennsylvania’s leading role in the founding of our American democracy.

“America was born in Pennsylvania, with its identity deeply rooted in agriculture,” said Secretary Redding. “Two hundred and fifty years later, Pennsylvania agriculture is still leading our nation, supplying the economic power, ingenuity, and innovation that is growing our nation’s future. Farm Show celebrates the outstanding products and people who make up our powerhouse agriculture and food industry, supporting 600,000 jobs pouring more than $132.5 billion into our state economy, including exports of more than $4 billion in agriculture and forest products not only keeping our heritage alive, but supplying innovative solutions to our nation’s greatest challenges.

“The Shapiro Administration is proud to support Pennsylvania agriculture and the innovative, tenacious Pennsylvanians who are growing a vibrant tomorrow for our Commonwealth and our nation,” he continued.

Wyck House Farm and Garden uniquely bridges the past and future of American agriculture. As one of the oldest urban farms in the country continuously cultivated for over 300 years Wyck stands as a living example of how agriculture has shaped communities, sustained families, and rooted American values in the soil of our cities and towns. Its legacy makes it the ideal backdrop for revealing a theme that connects generations of growers to the broader American story.

"For 300 years, residents of Wyck have used the land to nurture and nourish themselves and their community,” said Wyck Executive Director Kim Staub. “Today, we use the past as inspiration for the present, sharing a harvest that puts food on the table and strengthens connections in our urban neighborhood."

Source : pa.gov

Video: From Students to Solutions | On The Brink: Season 2, Episode 14

Ask Canada’s most decorated soybean breeder his favourite part of the job and he doesn’t name a single variety. He names the students.

Istvan Rajcan is a professor of soybean breeding and genetics in the Department of Plant Agriculture at the University of Guelph, where he has run the soybean breeding program for 28 and a half years. In that time he has developed 87 soybean cultivars, published 140 refereed papers and trained 51 graduate students. In 2025 he received the Public Sector Impact Award from the National Association for Plant Breeding.

He is also worried. In this episode he says Canada is at a crossroads, pointing to recent government cuts to plant breeding programs and to the facilities that support them. His prescription is structural. "Plant breeding funding formula has to be a long-term one," he says.

The formula he is defending is the public-private matching arrangement his program runs on. Private seed companies fund the work, provincial or federal money matches it, and the combined pool stretches each dollar further than either source could alone. At the National Association for Plant Breeding annual meeting in June, he says American public breeders were often surprised at how well that collaboration works in Canada.

He also describes how the people entering plant breeding have changed. His early graduate students came mostly from farms. More recently they include, in his words, "city kids who just became excited about genetics."

Topics covered:

Why public-private plant breeding funding in Canada needs a long-term

commitment rather than a larger one

How matching private seed company investment with provincial and federal

dollars multiplies research capacity

How the graduate student pipeline into plant breeding has shifted from

farm kids to city kids