The 116th Missouri State Fair begins Thursday in Sedalia and runs through Aug. 21.
"We're still a reasonable cost," Fair Commission Chairman Lowell Mohler said during a recent interview. "We have a lot of free entertainment. We have a lot of air-conditioned buildings.
"We've made it so much easier to bring a family and have a good day at an economical cost - that's the heartbeat of the Missouri State Fair."
The fair's general admission charge is $10 for an adult's single-day entry, with kids ages 6-12, $2, and free if they're 5 and under. Seniors (age 60 and over) pay $7 a person.
Also, the single-day general public parking is free.
VIP public parking is $5 per day - which is a donation to the Missouri State Fair Foundation.
And various businesses, like BreakTime, Walgreen's and Orscheln's (at participating locations), offer a number of different ways to get discounts on the tickets.
Missouri's State Fair dates back to Boonville and the 1850s, but it was an idea that didn't keep going until lawmakers in 1899 created a state-run state fair. Sedalia - then Missouri's fifth largest city - won the competition among six rural Missouri cities to host it.
Throughout all those years, Fair Director Mark Wolfe noted, agriculture education has been the fair's first goal and mission.
"I want people to remember the fair as, 'How good is Missouri agriculture?'" he said. "The best parts of the fair to me is not the food, the music (or the rides).
"It's the ag side."
Many farmers and their families have come to show prize animals and learn the latest technology to help them at home.
"I probably get a smile on my face and a good feeling," he said. "I have more fun watching our 4-H and FFA kids out showing" their animals.
Mohler added: "We've done a lot more in the last (few) years designing ag-education efforts, for people who really want to learn where our food comes from."
The work also is one of state Agriculture Director Richard Fordyce's priorities, Mohler said, "to get a better understanding of where food comes from, the whole safety issue the freshness, farm-to-market, encouraging that."
Still, he noted, "People don't necessarily come to the fair to be educated - they come to have fun. We have to always remember that and don't try to complicate the whole system by making it too complex and too scientific."
The fair's grandstand entertainment line up, as in years past, presents more country music acts than other styles.
"Our exit surveys tell us that (most fairgoers) like the country themes," Mohler said. "This is my 50th continuous fair, and I've seen about all the different acts and entertainment over the years.
"And we're a lot better today with it than we used to be."
That's because the Pepsi Grandstand now has "better seating, lighting and sound" than in the past, Mohler said. "We have, I think, better booking agents than we used to have - if there's anything good out there that is possibly on the circuit, we're one of the first to be a part of it."
Wolfe works with counterparts in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky to hire acts willing to make a "mini-tour" of several of the fairs, which run near to each other.
"They're not going to fly from California to Sedalia for one show," Wolfe said.
The main concept is running the fair more like a business than a state agency, Mohler said.
"We do run our fair like a business, today," he explained. "It didn't used to be that way.
"We have a fee fund. We have what we earn. We don't get any general revenue dollars - we don't get a dime out of this Capitol."
Some money comes from Missouri's Grape and Wine board, which can be used it for agriculture promotions, Wolfe said.
The fair's management structure changed in September 1995, when the nine-member State Fair Commission came into being to operate the fair and the fairgrounds instead of keeping that authority in the state agriculture department, which actually is one of Missouri's smaller agencies.
The state agriculture director is a commission member, and the fair is part of the department for state budgeting purposes.
"We all work together, and we have a very good working arrangement with the department," Mohler said.
He's a former Farm Bureau official and state agriculture director who also still farms land in both Cole and Boone counties, northwest of Jefferson City.
Missouri's fair has hit close to 400,000 visitors a few times but generally is in the 350,000-375,000 range.
At 400 acres of land, Mohler noted, "We have bigger fairgrounds than several (others) do - but we just don't sit in Des Moines or Springfield (Illinois) or Minneapolis or Indianapolis, where you have a million people to draw from."
The Missouri State Fair generally draws visitors from central and western Missouri, with a large drop in interest the farther east you go from U.S. 63.
For many in eastern Missouri, both of Illinois' state fairs - at Springfield, in the middle of the state, and at DuQuoin in southern Illinois - are easier to get to than Sedalia.
The same is true for northern Missouri - which is closer to Des Moines than Sedalia - and in southeast Missouri, which can get to Memphis and Arkansas more easily.
"We understand (all) that," Mohler said, adding, "If the weather cooperates as it did last year, we'll have another 356,812 people."
Weather is the biggest variable the fair deals with, Wolfe said.
"That's the cloud that hangs over my head all the time," he said. "We can pretty much control everything else we do - but the weather, we cannot.
"We've been very fortunate - our five-year average attendance is around 355,000. That makes the fair profitable."
However, blistering heat in 2007 - when it was around 105 degrees every day, Wolfe said - cut down on the numbers attending the fair.
And days of steady rains will do the same.
"The problem with rain is, we have a lot of outside events," Wolfe noted. "Concerts especially are a pretty major investment."
And, as long as an act makes it to the fairgrounds, they get paid whether the weather allows them to perform or not. And the tickets also get refunded so the fair takes a financial hit.
Insurance helps cover some of that, Wolfe said, and public safety and security are more important than profit.
"When it's great, it's great - but (weather) can cause a lot of problems," Wolfe said.
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