An agricultural society is the nonprofit organization, often chartered well over a century ago, that owns the fairgrounds and runs the fair itself, hiring judges, printing the premium book, and maintaining the grandstand and exhibition hall between events. Topsfield Fair's organizing society is one of the reasons it is counted among the oldest agricultural fairs in the country, and the same pattern holds elsewhere in the state, Barnstable County and Franklin County fairs among the other events run by their own county agricultural society rather than by a town government. The model is distinct from a Grange, a farm fraternal order that in Massachusetts still runs at least one fair of its own, even though both are nonprofit, member-based, and older than most businesses that now sponsor their fairs.
Also known as: county agricultural society, ag society.
