DLG-Agritechnica 2017 – a new overseas participation record

On the evening of the 18th November 2017, DLG-Agritechnica 2017 was able to close its gates having experienced its highest participation rate for overseas visitors in its thirty-year history. Around 60 per cent of the more than 2,800 exhibitors and over 100,000 of the roughly 450,000 participants came from abroad. The largest groups of exhibitors were from Italy, Russia and China. For the first time, the international exhibitors included participants from the India-Asiatic region, such as Mahindra & Mahindra.

As the Agritechnica organisers, the German Agricultural Society (Deutsche Landwirtschafts-Gesellschaft – DLG) explained towards the end of the exhibition, in correspondence with its goal of internationalisation, it focused Agritechnica 2017 on the mechanisation of agriculture in the developing countries and emerging economies.

 “ag-Machinery International” specialist conferences

In a newly established series of events, “Ag-Machinery International”, the problematic aspects of agricultural mechanisation in various countries and regions, including Southeast Asia, followed by Ukraine Russia and China as well as Iran, Zambia and Ethiopia, were specially highlighted in three expert conferences.

Agricultural engineering specialists, high-ranking agricultural experts and government representatives presented the current challenges that their countries were facing in agricultural production and discussed various solutions and agricultural engineering strategies to cope with problems and ensure that production yielded the right quality and quantity. Special mention ought to be given of Iran’s Deputy Minister of Agriculture, who gave an impressive account of the state of agriculture in Iran and took advantage of the opportunity to invite representatives of international agricultural engineering to engage in his country.

Participation of Germany’s Federal Development Ministry (BMZ)

The BMZ also made use of the agricultural engineering forum that Agritechnica 2017 offered to highlight the significance of agriculture for developing countries and emerging economies in particular. Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development Gerd Müller initiated a press conference under the heading “A world without hunger”. The Minister stressed the importance of appropriate agricultural engineering to particularly establish sustainable food security in developing countries and emerging economies, in which, owing to a scarcity of water, increasing climate change, poor availability of land, insufficient energy supply and a lack of training and upgrading, among other factors, agriculture was facing considerable challenges. He called on the representatives of the agricultural engineering industry to make exhaustive use of the technical and digital options that exist nowadays but also to provide appropriate, cheap and above all resource-friendly mechanisation concepts.

The constructive considerations, ideas and wishes addressing agricultural engineering at the large number of events run during Agritechnica 2017 certainly found a sympathetic ear. Hopefully, research institutions, responsible government authorities, national and international donors as well as the private agricultural engineering industry will join forces to continue to implement implementation together.

Karl-Martin Lüth, Senior Consultant to the German Agricultural Society.

African guests at Agrictechnica and the DLG Test Centre

In the context of the BMZ special initiative “ONE World – No hunger”, a group of visitors from Africa came to the DLG Engineering and Input Test Centre in Groß Umstadt, near Frankfurt am Main, on the 16th November 2017 as part of their study tour of Germany. They had previously informed themselves about technical innovations during a two-day visit to AGRITECHNICA in Hanover.

“Visit the AGRITECHNICA” – this was the working title of the excursion organised by the agricultural specialist centre (DLG) in co-operation with GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für internationale Zusammenarbeit) and the BMZ (12.-19.11.2017). The African delegation consisted of 24 persons – including representatives from the Mali, Ghanaian and Ethiopian Ministries of Agriculture, representatives of farmers’ associations, wage labour entrepreneurs, research institute employees and specialist consultants.

The African visitors had the opportunity to gather information on the specialist areas the DLG while viewing the DLG Engineering and Input Test Centre. Following a presentation on specialised topics, during a tour of the facility, the DLG testing engineers explained the Test Centre’s test programme. The visitors were particularly interested in the DLG-PowerMix roller test stand, with which comprehensive performance measurements can be taken on commercial vehicles under reproducible conditions.

(DLG/wi)

See also:

DLG-Agritechnica: Small solutions for small farmers

More information:

DLG-Agritechnica

DLG-Test Centre