Abstract
At the 2022 Almaty Regional Agricultural Exhibition, a wheat farmer from Zhambyl Oblast picked up a drought-resistant seed variety at a demonstration booth and later credited that single encounter with saving his crop the following season. This kind of incidental learning happens thousands of times at agricultural fairs, yet its contribution to the broader extension system is rarely measured. This research examined how agricultural exhibitions and fairs complement formal extension advisory services by providing farmers with knowledge, market connections, and technology exposure that routine advisory visits may not deliver. A cross-sectional survey of 412 farming households who attended exhibitions across four oblasts of southern Kazakhstan was conducted between April and November 2023. Farmer knowledge gain was assessed across six domains before and after exhibition attendance. Results showed that exhibition attendees reported a 29.4% increase in crop variety awareness and 24.7% improvement in market information compared to pre-attendance baselines. Farmers who combined exhibition attendance with regular extension contact achieved 37.8% higher technology adoption rates than those relying on either channel alone. National fairs excelled at market information (4.28/5) while field days performed best for soil and water conservation knowledge (4.18/5). The findings suggest that exhibitions serve a distinct but complementary role in the extension ecosystem, filling awareness and exposure gaps that individual advisory visits cannot efficiently address.