On March 13, a meeting of agricultural machinery companies was held in Warsaw at the Radisson Collection hotel, organized by Enterprise Ireland. The event included a discussion on the challenges of the agricultural sector in Poland and opportunities for cooperation with Ireland.
- The difficult situation of Polish farmers affects the machinery market
- The specificity of investments in animal farms differs from plant production
- Agricultural fairs are taking on a different meaning these days
- The Irish Origin Green program is an example of building competitive farms
Enterprise Ireland is the Irish Government’s business development agency that helps companies develop rapid growth strategies and enter new markets with innovative and sustainable solutions.
The event was attended by representatives of companies that supply Irish machines to the Polish market, such as JFC and Agrofala, as well as Fricke, Wanicki and a representative of the Irish company EasyFix and the Origin Green organization from the sister institution Enterprise Ireland.
Challenges of the Polish machinery market
What emerged during the meeting was that the Polish agricultural machinery sector faces two serious problems – low prices of agricultural produce, as well as changes in the subsidy program, which directly translates into farmers’ purchases. The uncertainty of what will happen next causes farmers to postpone purchasing decisions until later.
Dairy industry
Unlike crop production, milk producers must make purchasing decisions well in advance, often several years in advance, which are related, for example, to building permits. Therefore, they must ultimately make investments, even in unfavorable economic conditions.
The second issue is that farmers who are aware that the farm will remain in the hands of the family invest much more. Investments in animal farms are also undertaken to shorten and facilitate tasks and thus improve the quality of life.
Poland is also divided in terms of prices – in regions the price of milk differs by up to PLN 1. This influences the shape of investments in particular parts of the country.
Precision farming
Modern agriculture is focused on measuring all treatments and focusing production on precision. Navigation systems, automatic guidance, remote machine diagnostics – all this already works and is affordable. However, autonomy is still the “music of the future”.
The importance of agricultural fairs
Some fairs are losing their importance – attendance is often supported by people not related to agriculture who visit fairs out of curiosity. What Polish companies observe is that an individual approach to customers and the presentation of machines on farms and during field tests are more important than meetings at fairs.
Such solutions were introduced by Dairymaster, which has been taking its clients to foreign farms for several years. Farmers’ interest in this type of trips is constantly growing, and as they admit, it is a completely different, practical message than at fairs. These are starting to have more PR significance and show that the company is still operating on the market.
The access to offers on the Internet has also changed a lot, where checking the prices of machines or receiving an offer is not the slightest problem and the distance when it comes to orders is no longer important.
Contact with customers has also moved to social media, where virtually all the largest producers in the Agro industry have their accounts. This changes the specific approach to shopping – you go to the fair once a year and you have your phone with you all the time.
An example of building competitiveness
Origin Green is a government organization promoting Irish food. Their program covers the entire supply chain and all three stages of production and involves farmers, distributors and producers.
− To meet climate challenges, but also the expectations of consumers, retail business partners and large food distribution chains, Ireland created the world’s first sustainable food production program over 10 years ago. Origin Green differs in two basic ways from programs implemented in other countries. First of all, it is truly a nationwide program. This means that over 61,000 people take part in it. farmers in Ireland and over 300 food producing companies and all the largest retail and wholesale chains in Ireland. The second characteristic of this program is that it covers all three stages of food production and distribution – we start with farmers for whom a special program is created to ensure that their production and activities are environmentally friendly – explains Krzysztof Pogorzelec from Board Bia Irish Food Board.
Thanks to the program on farms, it was possible to reduce the production of Co2 by 9 percent while in food producing factories, reduce water and electricity consumption by up to 18%.
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