Great Yorkshire Show Day 1: TV presenter Kirstie Allsopp tries sheep shearing - plus videos and gallery

• Click the video thumbnails above to watch coverage of this year’s show. More video, stories and pictures throughout the three days.

Behind the crowds and the tradition, however, there lies a more solemn role for the show, one that is not so readily apparent.

While the show will celebrate the best of the farming industry the stark reality is that farming has changed dramatically in recent years.

England is increasingly home to fewer but larger farms. Thrown into this mixture is the fact that money is increasingly tight, meaning less people working on farms – a situation exacerbated by the increasing mechanisation of the industry.

Add in the gradual disappearance of cattle markets and machine auctions and you have a situation wherein our nation’s farmers are increasingly working in isolation.

The escalating solitude in which farmers operate is, however, relieved by an event like the Great Yorkshire Show, providing a vital social link for the sector.

The Great Yorkshire Show’s honorary director Bill Cowling said: “It is a fact that this generation that is involved with farming and rural life is very different today then they were say 25 years ago. There are a lot less employees on the farm and as such a lot less communication with other people.

“You end up having a lot of farmers who are essentially running a one-man band these days, it can be a very lonely existence.

“Some days you might not talk to anyone all day until you go home.

“I think it is these circumstances that are making events like the Great Yorkshire Show ever more important.”

The scale and prestige of the Great Yorkshire Show in 2011 also means it attracts the best of the nation’s cattle societies and breeders, allowing for a unique opportunity to meet and share information with those operating in a similar area of farming.

“It is certainly not all work, many end up having very enjoyable evenings. A lot of the big private breed societies all decide to meet up. The breed society parties bring a lot of people together, it allows people to have a barbecue with friends and enjoy all sorts of different activities.

“Another aspect that comes up is perhaps the chance to meet with organisations rather than people. I am talking here of organisations like the Farm Crisis Network, the Royal Agricultural Benevolent Society and the Rural Crisis Network, charities which are there in rural communities for people who find themselves in difficult circumstances.”

Indeed many who attend the Great Yorkshire Show treat it as a mini-holiday and stay overnight and make a break of the event.

Mr Cowling said: “This is something which has massively increased over the last 10 years. More and more people are bringing caravans to the show rather than travelling in and out every day.

“It is a holiday for some exhibitors.”

Howard Petch, chairman of the Farm Crisis Network in Yorkshire, is well aware of the benefits that events like the Great Yorkshire Show bring to the rural population.

“Probably over recent years it has become more important for rural farming families whose operations tend to be very isolationist. There are fewer people and fewer farms.

“You go into the Dales and there are probably half the farmers there. Therefore opportunities to meet and talk on familiar territory in terms of other farmers, are quite limited.”

As well as the cattle and horse classes which have justifiably made the show popular for decades, recent years have seen the Food Hall become a landmark attraction for the event.

Mr Petch sees this as symptomatic of another benefit which the show has brought.

“Farming has always been very bad at engaging with the general public.

“Now when you walk into the food hall you will see small food companies, many of whom are based on farms, really enjoying engaging with the consumer in a manner which would have been unheard of 20 years ago.”

For all of its history and tradition the Great Yorkshire Show remains a resolutely 21st century event, providing many social and commercial services to the region.

It is the sad reality that often Yorkshire’s farmers have little to feel good about.

Despite noises to the contrary we have a supermarket industry which insatiably chases ever higher profits at the expense of the nation’s farmers.

We have producers who have farmed in the region for decades who are faced with continuing to operate at a loss or give up the business they love. And we still have a farming industry which remains reluctantly reliant on subsidies, often paid to them haphazardly.

But for three days, starting today, none of this will matter. Yorkshire farmers will have their heads held high today in Harrogate.