Agritechnica 2019 – a review
This year’s Agritechnica again was a huge success. About 150 HORSCH employees welcomed a lot of customers from all over the world at the stand. The visitors were particularly interested in the innovations.
At the beginning of the Agritechnica Cornelia and Michael Horsch were honoured with the Award of Merit by the European Society of Agricultural Engineers (EurAgEng). Every two years, this prize is awarded to personalities who contribute to agricultural engineering in an outstanding way and develop ground-breaking innovations of European and international importance.
But this was not the only award for HORSCH at the Agritechnia. The HORSCH Transformer VF was elected „Machine of the Year 2020“ in the category mechanical population management. This prize is awarded on a two-year basis by the professional trade magazines traction and agrarheute.
Michael and Philipp Horsch gave us their personal summary of the Agritechnica
Michael Horsch: „I was very surprised how many people visited our stand – despite the tense situation in the agricultural sector. I myself did not talk very much about our machines. I mainly talked about the direction agricultural will take in the future. Among others the topics were: what are the chances of hybrid farming and what will have to face if glyphosate is really banned. Farming minister Julia Klöckner and Joachim Rukwied, President of the German Farmers Association, independently visited our stand. They both explained in detail which topics they are focussing on at the moment. I was very surprised how intensely they deal with new topics. I think that both have very good ideas for the future that however will still take time to mature. On the whole, what I heard from them was rather encouraging even though they have not yet talked about everything in public.“
Philipp Horsch: „We are very satisfied with this year’s Agritechnica. We are happy that we had so many opportunities for good discussions and to network with so many of our customers and partners. This year we presented more innovations than ever before. Our explosion of innovations set off. Especially the new self-propelled sprayer Leeb PT and the tools for mechanical weed control got an excellent feedback. This is why we are looking quite positively into the new business year. At the moment, we are surely facing the biggest changes in the history of agriculture – and the farmers sense it. The Agritechnica, thus, was an ideal opportunity for an exchange. I noticed that most of the farmers are expecting these changes with a positive and optimistic attitude. In the future, we together with the farmers will tackle this change in agriculture.”