Oct 06, 2026
By Shop Kansas Farms
Shop Kansas Farms (SKF) vendors found success exhibiting in the Kansas Farm Bureau (KFB) booth at the 2026 Kansas State Fair, Sept. 11-20 in Hutchinson.
This is the second year the KFB program has invited vendors to sell their products directly to consumers at the fair.
“Our mission at Shop Kansas Farms is to connect consumers to the farmers and ranchers who grow our food,” says Kylee Stout, business development manager for Shop Kansas Farms. “We see the fair as a great opportunity to highlight our growers and give them a chance to be in a booth without a 10-day commitment to connect to more consumers.” She says fairgoers enjoyed the revolving vendors as well. Not only did they buy products, but they also learned from the growers and creators of the products.
VENDOR EXPERIENCE
“You have a wide range of people you’re communicating with and sharing your story with,” shares Cynthia Maddock of Madd House Hill, a goat milk skin care company in Paola. “There’s always a lot of education about our products.”
The Maddocks enjoyed visiting with a diverse crowd about the benefits of goat milk products.
All vendors who manned the booth were Farm Bureau members in Kansas. They spoke with visitors about their experience in the organization and passed out ice cream coupons.
“It was great to interact with folks from all over the state, not only telling them about our farm operation, but also what Shop Kansas Farms is all about and Farm Bureau in general,” says Anna Tucker of Diamond T Livestock.
The Tucker family connected with fairgoers about the lambs they raise and sell, putting a face to the name of someone who raises sheep. Other vendors also enjoyed changing fairgoers’ minds about their products.
For Cassondra Basinger of Basinger’s Beef in Pretty Prairie, offering samples to spectators did the trick.
“They try it and they’re like, ‘Oh, this is really good. This is not what I thought it was going to be!’”
She says customers enjoyed their farm-raised summer sausage and beef jerky, and she had many conversations about their beef cattle operation, emphasizing their beef is cared for on their farm from start to finish.
Another hit was Twisted Sisters Pretzels, which sold out of pretzels all three days they exhibited.
“Twisted Sisters Pretzels were very popular,” Stout says. “They have 10 different flavors of snack pretzels.”
For two days, Farm Bureau Financial Services used the booth for agent recruitment. They visited with fair attendees about career options and left with a list of qualified individuals to follow up with.
FAIR SUCCESS
The Kansas State Fair estimates more than 330,000 visitors came to the fair, about a 10 percent increase from 2025, according to Bryan Schulz, Kansas State Fair general manager.
Kansas Farm Bureau also provided a T-shirt for each livestock exhibitor, handed out more than 3,000 ice cream coupons to booth visitors and drew daily for $100 in groceries, courtesy of the organization’s membership magazine, Kansas Living.
Stout concludes, "We're looking forward to 2027, and the countdown has already begun for next year!"
Stay tuned for information on next year’s fair by following Kansas Farm Bureau and Shop Kansas Farms on Facebook.