The return of the agricultural exhibition.....

I actually went to an exhibition last week – yes, a real live event, with exhibitors, visitors, machinery you could touch! Getting my head round this, in the context of the preceding 18-month ag event-free barren period took a little time. Nevertheless, I reacquainted myself with the A17 and A15 and parked up at Boothby Graffoe around half past eight on Wednesday morning.

Having not really been sure what to expect, the familiar leitmotifs of events of yore were, reassuringly, all there – acres of Sch?ffel fleece, large unwieldy bags handed out by AgChem and machinery suppliers, exhibitor staff keen and primed to talk about their newest technical innovation. In the absence of the mega-marquees which used to occupy the central area of the site, the Sprays and Sprayers arena is now centre stage, a good focal point bordered by a colourful wildflower hedge. Certainly, since a number of the global longliner machinery brands backed out (some still remain it should be noted) and a number of other notable arable equipment manufacturers were also absent, the slow death of Cereals and other events has often been debated. Let’s not forget that the last 18 months have been awful for those in the events management sector – Lamma rescheduled more than once, the Royal Welsh and Royal Highland not opening their gates 2 years in succession, Tillage Live and the Normac cultivations demo cancelled at the last minute (both are scheduled to make a reappearance this September) and many other events simply canned and therefore with no little or no income. As for the big beasts of European / International ag machinery exhibitions - EIMA, SIMA, Agritechnica – the revenue (or lack of) implications are massive. Currently these are scheduled to take place in October this year, November 2022 and February 2022 respectively. Notably flying in the face of adversity, the Doe Show changed format in February this year to a pretty successful online event instead, thereby proving the show really must go on.

However, many exhibitors now face a conundrum: with ag machinery business at healthy levels for manufacturers and their retail dealerships last year (in many cases with reduced running costs – travel expenses, exhibition budgets etc), why bother exhibiting? Of course, this isn’t a black and white situation; the obvious missing factor since last March has been face to face contact and interaction – the people stuff. Machinery dealers have had a little more of this for sure, and an awful lot of business has been successfully concluded from a distance, but ultimately for an industry which thrives on strong relationships between manufacturer and dealer, dealer and end user, a more regular events calendar should soon start to take shape. Whether this will be quite the busy calendar it used to be remains to be seen, but the need to engage with customers in a face to face setting will return in some way, shape or form. This month’s Great Yorkshire Show, and autumn events such as AgriScot and CropTec will be indicative of our new normal.

Otherwise, my notes from Cereals conclude that beyond the already impressive technology on display in the Sprays and Sprayers arena and elsewhere, the really striking exhibit was AgXeed’s AgBot working with front and rear mounted 3m stubble cultivation tools. This seemed the most practical of the new generation of prime movers for general field work (Agrointelli’s Robotti also ticks the box for accuracy in row crop work), as it’s basically a tractor without an operator station and can therefore hitch up a variety of implements meaning its versatility will count heavily towards the return on investment. Whilst autonomous machines won’t kick out human operators in every farming activity, let’s see who the innovators and early adopters are…….