Every second November, Agritechnica, the world’s largest farm machinery exhibition, opens its doors in Hanover, Germany. Held on the largest fairground anywhere, a site that was built, in part, to house a World Expo, the show has roughly 100 acres under roof. Crammed into the 27 massive exhibit halls this year were 2,898 exhibits, ranging from large displays of major brand equipment to small booths housing cutting-edge prototypes.
It might be fair to say Agritechnica is the farm equipment world’s equivalent of the Detroit Auto Show. Not only do you see what is on dealers’ lots now, but you get a glimpse of what they’ll be selling five or 10 years down the road. And because the show has a global perspective, you get to see what farmers all over the world are interested in.
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In all, approximately 450,000 visits to the site were recorded during the week-long event, and Grainews was there for the show’s full duration to take in as much as possible. In the pages of this issue, you’ll see some of what we saw. We’ll have more to show you in future issues as well, so keep your eye open for more articles in the weeks ahead.
To help give you a feel for what it was like to be there, here are some images that caught our eye during the trek through the 26-plus kilometres of carpeted aisles in the exhibit halls.
For a video look at Agritechnica 2013, watch the e-Quip TV episodes online at grainews.ca/video. †
