Farmers Voices

My husband and I have been attending AGRITECHNICA for more than 20 years. It's a fun trip that always brings new inspiration, new ideas, and interesting conversations. In 2025, I am expecting to see the progress in the development of specific weed control in crops: green to green

As joint managers of our 1200 ha arable farm in Hungary since 2005, my husband and I have attended AGRITECHNICA together and sometimes we have brought our employees.

At the trade fair, we manage some things together, especially contacting suppliers and gathering information about planned business developments. However, we also sometimes divide the visit between the two of us to explore our specialized competences. I like to attend technical presentations, while my husband prefers to quickly browse the halls in search of technical surprises. However, it's always nice to be out there together and come home with new ideas.

After that, I introduced precision farming in 2015 on tractors and was amazed at the saving in input cost, but most of all: the navigation system allows you to focus 85-90% of the time, on the implement.

Apart from saving fuel and time, precision farming also saves on labour. In the past, when spreading fertilizer or planting, you had your tractor operator and two additional labourers, one at one end of the field and another at the other end, operating as markers for the tractor operator to know where he needs to go. This is anything but precision, as every labourers’ length in stride differs!

My second future investment will be automation and optimisation of my resources. Automation eliminates the possibility of human error, and you save time.

At AGRITECHNICA, you can see all the new and old technology available to the agricultural sector and you can get accurate figures of what your savings are going to be if you implement the technology and apply it to your farming operation.

The one thing that differentiates AGRITECHNICA from any other agricultural exhibition, is that you can speak to the development engineer, find out what the idea behind the design was and how to optimise the use of the implement. AGRITECHNICA caters for all types of farming and every time I visit, there are new innovations.

As a South African farmer, we face many challenges, including competitiveness, socio-economic, socio-political, crime, water scarcity and rising costs. Labour and energy supply are two of the greatest overhead costs. 

AGRITECHNICA gives me the opportunity to meet with farmers, engineers, designers etc. from all over the world. I was pleasantly surprised on my last visit in 2023, to meet more South African farmers at AGRITECHNICA.

Every farm has its own identity, but from talking and interacting with these people, I gain insight into what other farmers from other parts of the world struggle with and discuss what possible solution there are, or solutions that they have already implemented.

I have had the honour to build relationships with different suppliers and farmers through AGRITECHNICA. I truly believe that the South African farmers can give valuable contributions to other farmers due to the common saying in South Africa;” ‘n boer maak ‘n plan” translated in English;” A farmer makes a plan”, and that is one thing we as SA farmers specialise in, we always have a plan and a solution if a problem occurs.

I attended my first AGRITECHNICA at the age of six with my father. As I grew up in agriculture, I was always very interested in technology. Later, I organised several bus trips to AGRITECHNICA at the technical school, followed by a visit to the Young Famers Party. Today, AGRITECHNICA is always a highlight for me because I can get detailed information about future business investments there. I meet my business partners there and get a very good overview of all the technical innovations. I also enjoy the professional and creative dialogue and the great DLG network.

I run an arable farm in northern Hesse, where we grow sugar beet, ware potatoes and grain fennel in addition to cereals and rapeseed. I also have a contracting company where we offer contract threshing, plant protection and soil sampling. AGRITECHNICA is a great opportunity to find out about these specialised areas, particularly in the fields of special crops and soil sampling technology.