Ireland is set to host the World Ploughing Contest in 2037, general secretary of the World Ploughing Organisation (WPO) and and assistant director of the National Ploughing Association (NPA) Anna Marie McHugh has confirmed to Agriland.
Speaking at an unveiling ceremony for the Cairn of Peace monument which took place in Ratheniska, Co. Laois today (Friday, March 10), McHugh said that the hosts for the contest are planned very far in advance, and that Ireland has been chosen as the location for it in 14 years time.
However, it is not yet decided where exactly in the country the event will take place. Speaking to Agriland, McHugh said:
“We had a world meeting last week online and Ireland is scheduled to have the world contest again in 2037, it doesn’t come around that often.
“Something can happen that it has to change like last year when the Russian event was cancelled but we’re not talking about any time in the near future to host it Ireland again,” she added.
According to the general secretary, the contest will take place in Latvia this year, in Estonia in 2024, in the Czech Republic in 2025 and in Norway the following year.
The World Ploughing Contest was due to be hosted in Russia last year, however, following the illegal invasion of Ukraine, it was decided that it would be hosted elsewhere.
McHugh said that a lot of work went into organising what came next, however, the community was able “to pull together” and the event was run alongside the National Ploughing Championships in Ratheniska, Co. Laois from September 20 to 23.
Cairn of Peace monument
Director of the NPA Anna May McHugh and her colleagues officially unveiled the Cairn of Peace monument in Ratheniska village this afternoon, which commemorates the village’s hosting of the 67th contest in 2022.
Since 1953, each country that hosts the World Ploughing Contest erects a ‘Cairn of Peace’ monument – which is inscribed with the phrase, ‘Let peace cultivate the fields’.
There are five Cairns in Ireland already, two in Co. Carlow, two in Co. Wexford and one in Killarney in Co. Kerry, all of which have a unique design. Despite this, all the Cairns around the world carry an inscribed stone slab from each of the countries that have hosted the contest.
According to McHugh, the countries ship the slabs to the locations of the monuments, and often the slabs will be designed using a type of stone that is particularly native to the country.
The 2022 Cairn stone was extracted from McKeon Stone’s Kilkenny Blue Limestone quarry in Threecastles, Co. Kilkenny.
Kilkenny Blue Limestone, a sedimentary rock, was laid down about 330 million years ago in the carboniferous era when Ireland was covered by a warm shallow sea.
McKeown Stone, Stradbally crafted the stone into the Cairn while Kent Stainless created the steelwork on the monument.