For everyone who is seriously involved in agriculture, for the past few years life has clearly been following a two-year cycle: every odd year in November, agricultural producers gather in Hannover for the Agritechnica exhibition.
Exhibition Agritechnica 2013 most seriously demonstrated the growing importance of agriculture and agricultural machinery. This year she had 2898 exhibitors, about 450 thousand people visited her, 112 thousand of them were from abroad, and thus she again exceeded the figures of the previous year. This was announced on the final day of the exhibition by the Chief Executive Officer of the German Agricultural Society, Dr. Reinhard Grandke. The mood among exhibitors and visitors was very optimistic. A sign of this was a serious investment mood.
“According to an independent survey of visitors, more than two-thirds of agricultural producers assess the current situation at their enterprise positively and intend to invest in the next two years,” said Dr. Grandke.
Achievements of the exhibition:
- Almost 2900 exhibitors from 47 countries showed a full range of modern agricultural machinery, as well as components and spare parts (Systems & Components).
The number of foreign exhibitors increased, the number of which was 1500. This figure has grown over the past 10 years from 33 percent to 52 percent this year.
2. For the first time in the concept of Agritechnica 2013, the new department in the pavilion "Systems & Components" made a division between suppliers of systems, modules, components and spare parts. This concept has paid off and will be further refined at Agritechnica 2015.
3 thousand visitors! Agritechnica again reached the attendance record. This is seven percent higher than in 450 and underlines the huge interest of agricultural producers, contracting enterprises and trade organizations in the most modern equipment and promising concepts for the future.
4. About 338 thousand visitors came from Germany - six percent more compared to 2011. As shown by a survey of visitors, farmers from all regions of Germany were very well represented. 38 percent came from the south and southwest of Germany, 50 percent from the north and west of Germany, and 12 percent from the east.
5. 112 thousand foreign visitors to the exhibition is a new record! Every fourth visitor came from abroad, the majority from Switzerland (more than 11,5 thousand visitors), the Netherlands (10 thousand), Austria (8,7 thousand), France (7,5 thousand), Ireland (5,8 , 5,2 thousand), Denmark (5 thousand), Great Britain (4,5 thousand), Belgium (4,3 thousand), Finland (3,7 thousand) and Italy (XNUMX thousand).
Among the exhibitors, about 19 thousand were investors and decision makers from large enterprises in Central and Eastern Europe. Most investors came from the Czech Republic (3,6 thousand), Poland (2,9 thousand), Russia (2,4 thousand) and Ukraine (1,9 thousand).
The character of the world's leading exhibition was particularly impressive in the form of significantly increased attendance from transoceanic countries. For example, the number of visitors from North, Central and South America increased to 8,9 thousand, from Oceania to 2 thousand, from India and African countries to 1350 people.
6. Developments in the field of electronics and sensor technology nowadays mainly determine the innovative degree of equipment and systems with the goal of even more efficient, accurate, environmentally friendly and low-cost organization of processes. Progress at the Agritechnica exhibition was noticeable, in particular, in the field of creating network structures between different systems. In the field of “Smart Farming”, solutions were presented, for example, on the topic of data management, navigation / sensor technology, optimized computer equipment, as well as automatic regulation and control technology.
7. For the newly industrialized countries of Africa and Asia, the active introduction of know-how is necessary.
In addition to the transfer of knowledge and skills, agricultural producers in these countries need adapted technologies.
As part of a new series of events, international experts highlighted market potentials and market access, as well as financing and equipment requirements for China, India, and South Africa. This series of events was very interesting. Its results will help accelerate the transfer of know-how to these countries. This was facilitated by an extraordinary rice production event. Numerous visitors received information on water management, land preparation, sowing, fertilizing, plant protection, and harvesting.
8. More than 20 thousand young farmers, schoolchildren and students from Germany and from abroad received the most detailed information in numerous professional forums, from the Live Workshop to individual advice on career building issues. Moreover, information from numerous manufacturers about interesting areas of activity at their enterprises was especially attractive for young visitors.
Feed people - Increase efficiency - Conserve resources
It is known that in 2050 it will be necessary to supply food to 9 billion inhabitants of the planet. At the same time, the demand for raw materials of agricultural origin for energy production will increase. These are big tasks that the peasants have to solve. For agricultural regions around the world, this means the need to further improve production efficiency. It is in the field of crop production that there is still great potential, especially thanks to the further development of electronics and the new scale of machine productivity. For example, Smart Farming technology makes possible numerous changes in the organization of the enterprise and in production technology.
At the same time, thanks to innovative technology, the production of raw materials can be carried out more economically and environmentally friendly. The way the peasants manage to cope with the growing scarcity of resources is shown by an example from Germany. Here, the leading farms for the period from 1984 to 2011 were able to increase productivity by 30% and at the same time reduce the use of resources.
In the same time period, energy consumption was reduced by 60%, as well as the use of plant protection products and fertilizers per unit of production (research by the Göttingen Economic Bureau Betriebswirtschaftliches Buros Guttingen).
Business climate and commercial development
Farming is forecasted to have very good medium and long-term prospects. Both agricultural machinery manufacturers and the peasants themselves are counting on this. In the light of current prices for milk and wheat, price crises prevailing until recently seem to be overcome. European peasants assess the current business climate and their expectations for further commercial development, as before, at a consistently high level. This is shown by the results of the trend monitoring conducted by DLG together with the leading European Institute for Agricultural Market Research Kleffmann Group (Lüdingshausen, Westafalia) in Germany, France, Great Britain and Poland. German peasants assess the current business climate as steadily positive, while their counterparts from France and Poland are more restrained in their assessments. UK farmers rate their current situation higher than in 2012. This also applies to expectations regarding the further development of the situation. It can be concluded that the peasants of Great Britain have already overcome the recession due to the difficult conditions of harvesting and sowing in 2012. Now they look more positively at the future. German farmers evaluate the expected commercial development in the next 12 months positively. The heads of French households expect in the coming months rather average development of the situation. The expectations of Polish peasants are more restrained than in the spring of 2013.
Willingness to invest
The investment readiness of peasants in Germany, France, Great Britain and Poland is different. Current monitoring of trends shows a high willingness to invest in Germany (52%) and Poland (50%) - every second of the surveyed peasants in these countries plans to invest in the next 12 months. In France, the willingness to invest is currently around 30%, which is roughly the same as the previous exhibition in 2011. The French farms intend to direct 67% of the planned investments into crop production.
Awards and Winners
DLG appointed neutral expert committee in accordance with strict awarded four new items with gold medals and 33 new items with silver medals.
Our publication is especially pleased to note the achievement of our long-standing partner - the company "Grimme". The company's engineers managed to surprise everyone with their new development. When harvesting potatoes, mainly mechanical systems are used to separate impurities similar in shape to the tubers, such as stones and clods of soil. However, their productivity is limited, which creates certain inconveniences when working with several harvesting machines at the same time.
Pneumatic separation device AirSep, Grimme Landmaschinenfabrik GmbH & Co. KG, Damme, Germany (Hall 25, stand F11).
By combining the perforated bottom conveyor and the air supplied from below, for the first time in the potato harvesting technique, it was possible to create a pneumatic separation device in which the direction of movement of the heap and, thereby, the specific throughput are preserved without restrictions. During the passage through the separation section, the tubers are practically sparingly hovering over the vibrating bottom conveyor, while heavy stones and lumps are lowered down and sent through the segmented lock to the discharge conveyor. The quality and performance of the separation can be adapted to the composition of the crop and switched directly from the tractor (steplessly), changing the combination of air volumes, tilt and vibration frequency of the bottom conveyor. Along with high production while reducing the cost of subsequent manual sorting, it is also possible to use areas where previously potatoes could be grown only after costly soil separation in spring.
In the process of working with 2-row combine harvesters, the productivity of brush separating devices is 30 t / h. Thanks to AirSep, productivity rises to 60 t / h while achieving high sorting accuracy. At Agritechnica 2013, the AirSep separator is featured on the SV 2 260-row trailed harvester.
Online simulator of control of harvesting machines and tractors (company CLAAS Vertriebsgesellschaft mbH, Harse-winkel, Germany). Hall 13, booth B05.
For the first time, an online simulator for controlling harvesting machines and tractors from CLAAS makes it possible to dynamically display the entire behavior of a machine on a computer display in various operating conditions. Thus, tractor drivers and machine operators can independently train in an interactive online system at the computer in their free time from field work. Thanks to such training, the technical potential of cleaning equipment can be used more efficiently from the first days of cleaning, and the number of errors and breakdowns is reduced, which significantly saves time and costs.
Telescopic handler with a hybrid drive Merlo Hybrid telehandler - Turbofarmer 40.7 Hybrid (Merlo SpA, Chervaska, Italy). Hall 6, stand C15.
For the first time in agriculture, a plug-in-hybrid vehicle is offered, in which you can choose between electric and diesel-electric drive on request. In electric mode, the truck is powered by a 30 kWh lithium battery - it operates quietly and without emissions, which allows it to be used in closed rooms. In hybrid mode, a constant-speed diesel engine supplies power to operate the truck and charges the battery at the same time. Further reduction in operating costs is achieved by recharging the battery from the mains or solar panels.
AHMAT: a fully automated spread spectrum setup on a double-disc fertilizer spreader (RAUCH Landmaschinenfabrik GmbH, Sinzheim, Germany). Hall 15, stand D30.
And the company MSO Messtechnik und Ortung GmbH (Bad Münstereifel, Germany). Hall 17, booth A26
AXMAT manufactured by Rauch is the world's first fully automated installation for online evaluation of fertilizer distribution and fully automatic adjustment of the fertilizer spreader according to the type of fertilizer and the specified working width. Microwave sensors and a fully automatic spreader adjustment system achieve high precision fertilizer distribution. An arrow rotating around the spreading disc, equipped with microwave sensors, detects the spread spectrum without contact. By means of the rotary bottom of the hopper and the metering hole, the spreading is automatically controlled in accordance with the set working width. During operation, the spread pattern is constantly monitored and, if necessary, the point of hit of the fat on the spreading disc is automatically adjusted. The new, fully automatic self-tuning of the fertilizer spreader to a given working width compared to the usual adjustment methods allows to achieve higher accuracy, and without testing spreading in the field.
Constant autocontrol makes it possible, when changing a fertilizer batch or changing weather conditions, to fully automatically adjust the machine to a given working width in real time (online). The system improves fertilizer application efficiency, reduces emissions and fertilizer costs, and increases the guarantee of high yields. The first test results by the French Institute IRESTEA authoritatively confirm the above-mentioned advantages of the system.