By Chris McCullough

TRACKS replacing tyres, electricity replacing diesel and robots replacing human labour were systems all on show at Agritechnica, the world’s largest farm machinery show.

Held in Hanover, Germany, the show is held every two years and attracts around 450,000 visitors to look around 23 giant halls filled with machinery and technology.

More than 10,000 visitors from the UK and Ireland made the trek to Hannover for the last Agritechnica. For this 2017 event there were 21 exhibitors from Ireland attending and 57 from the UK.

An alternative to diesel power was a common talking point on the Agritechnica stands, with many mainstream manufacturers offering up electric and even methane-powered engines.

However, the general opinion from the key players is that diesel use in the agricultural sector is here to stay for the next 10 years at least.

Electrical powered tractors and other similar powered machines were on show, mostly as prototypes, but with costs of over €100,000 just to electrify a base machine, the likelihood of them ever coming into production is slim.

Aside from exhibiting futuristic technology, most of the machinery manufacturers had something new to unveil, or at least something that had been tweaked to make it new.

Valtra won the Tractor of the Year competition for 2018 for the first time ever in the brand’s history with the T254 Versu which also won a best design award.

Overall, the mood at Agritechnica this year was positive with farmers happy to make investments on the stands thanks to relatively good produce prices being experienced in some part of the world.

From Iran to the United States, from New Zealand to Northern Ireland, from Israel to Malaysia, the visitors came, they saw, and took in what the future looks like in global agriculture.