THE Farm Machinery & Industry Association (FMIA) can take a bow.
It underlined its importance to the farm mechanisation industry when its executive officer John Henchy ended up representing Australia at Argentina’s annual trade fair AGROACTIVA 2018 last month.
The FMIA was invited by the Argentine Chamber of Commerce to visit the trade fair and the association jumped at the chance to check out the country’s offerings.
As it turned out, John was the only Australian present at the event, held about 300 kilometres north west of the capital Buenos Aires.
“It was a three-day field day and I, and nine representatives from other countries were invited to conduct interviews with local exhibitors to see if there were any trade opportunities between our two countries,” John said.
Take a look at John’s take-away from the fair:
Argentina is the largest grain producer per capita at 2309 kilograms, Australia is third with 1678kg.
92 per cent of arable land is farmed with no-till, using discs.
A technology comment at the fair was, “today’s machinery will be in a museum in three years’ time”.
There are 55 sprayer manufacturers, 50 planter factories, 30 silo bag producers and 17 fertiliser manufacturers.
Resistant weeds have increased from six varieties to 30 in the past five years.
Carbon fibre spray booms lead the world, being used with Weed Seeker.
No evidence of 4WD equal-wheeled tractors on display, mainly high horsepower FWA models.
According to John, the big takeaway was Unimap software to monitor real-time farm activity.
“It’s an excellent program which Bayer gives to its big customers, with particular emphasis on spraying,” he said.
“Sprayers can detect different weeds as opposed to just green on brown like Weed Seeker.”
Argentina looks to have plenty of manufacturers so astute WA manufacturers will no doubt be looking at niche products for the Argentineans to snap up.