Soybean Festival UTM involvement reaches ‘all-time high’

Every year, the Martin community, students at UTM and neighboring cities alike make the journey to the annual Soybean Festival.

Any person can enjoy the outside glamorous appeal of the festival, but only certain individuals are aware of the more in-depth values on the week-long carnival.

For one, much hard work is put in by individuals within the community, whether that be those associated with businesses or those participating in events on their own. Brad Thompson, the Director of Community Development for the City of Martin and a member on the Board of Directors for the Soybean Festival, said that the efforts behind the Soybean Festival are more strenuous than most people realize. Workers spend long, hot days before the festival setting up the proximity and creating the attractive manifestation.

“It takes much planning, hard work, and collaboration for a festival to run smoothly, generate good vendors and attract large crowds,” Thompson said.

This planning, however, does not go to waste. Thompson said that this year was a success in terms of UTM involvement.

“It was a privilege this year to have the UTM Percussion to participate on our main stage to open for The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus on our university night. I [also] thought that UTM student involvement was at an all-time high. The Soybean Festival Committee makes a conscious effort to schedule diverse events that would appeal to every segment of our community,” Thompson said.

This year the Soybean Festival had over 50 different events throughout the week, over 50 different vendors, over 75 local sponsors and approximately 20,000 people throughout the length of the festival.

The council is now in the procedure of closing out the festival. Financial assessments, population tally and other statistics are being recorded and compared to the previous year. This proves useful with figuring out the participation turn-out and in recent years, it has shown that participation continues to increase.

“Each year our festival gains more attention, has more events and attracts more people. We plan to do just that again next year,” Thompson said.