Agricultural Machinery: first half of year on the plus side
The registrations of agricultural machinery showed a gain in the first half of the year. Tractors were up 13%, though the figure for June signaled a decline compared to the same month in 2010. Percentages of increase went beyond the national average for all the leading regions with especially high surges in Lombardy and Puglia.
The agricultural machinery market closed the first half of the year in the black with tractor sales 13% ahead of the first half of 2010, combine harvesters up 2% and trailers gaining 10%. Only transporters ran against the trend with a decline of 5.6%. According to data provided by the Ministry for Transport and elaborated by the Unacoma manufacturers association, tractors were the machinery type leading the way thanks to 13,550 units registered against the figure of 12,000 reported for 2010. Tractors, however, are the category causing the greatest uncertainty for the second half of the year. Analyses, in fact, show that following the surge in registrations at the beginning of the year, with an increase as great as 36% in February, volumes went into decline to the point that for the single months, sales fell 8.5% in June compared to the same month in 2010. June was negative for other types of machinery as well, especially for combines which nosed down 12%. Unacoma President Massimo Goldoni commented, “We were expecting a brilliant beginning of the year as a result of deferred scrapping incentives and Rural Development Plan financing granted at the end of December and completed in the early months of 2011 and we had also forecast a natural downturn by mid-year.” He went on to say, “The 13% average increase for tractors is encouraging and we hope that the market might stabilize in the second half of 2011 to wind up with the indices still on the positive side.”
A look at data at the local level discloses percentage gains in the first half which went beyond the national average in the most important regions with Emilia Romagna up 18.3% for tractor sales, gains of greater than 22% for the Lazio, Piedmont and Veneto Regions, Lombardy up 37.8% and a leap of 60.8% in Puglia.
Olive Oil production chain: the focus of Agrilevante
The Puglia exhibition set for October 13 to 16 in Bari will highlight the sector of olive cultivation and olive oil through the presentation of innovative technologies and a program of trials and technical and educational events.
Olive cultivation and the oil production chain will make up one of the major issues for Agrilevante 2011, the international review of machinery and technologies for agriculture scheduled for October 13 to 16 in Bari. The reason behind this decision reached by the organizers, Unacoma Service and the Fiera di Bari, is the paramount importance of the olive oil sector in the Mediterranean agricultural economy, especially in Italy and the Puglia Region hosting the event.
Italy is Europe’s second largest olive oil producer after Spain with average annual production of more than six million quintals, two-thirds of which is extra virgin carrying as many as 39 DOP (Protected Destination of Origin) labels and IGP (Protected Geographic Origin) certification recognized throughout Europe. The Puglia Region, in turn, is the nation’s largest producer of olive oil and can claim the largest number of enterprises operating in this sector, 267,203 of them, followed by Sicily with 196,352, Calabria, 136,016, and the Campania Region at 112,093.
To meet the requirements of such a far-flung production fabric, Agrilevante 2011 will be offering technologies for the entire production chain: nurseries, olive orchard developers, machinery and products for orchard management, machinery for harvesting and mulching pruning residues, mechanized harvesting, harvesting nets, olive pressing for oil extraction, machinery for processing olives and plant for short production chain extraction. The many scientific, educational and promotional initiatives planned are divided into four main areas:
- Innovation Area mainly under the responsibility of the University of Bari for an exhibition of innovative machinery and prototypes for the entire olive-olive oil production chain as well as trials in the field at agricultural enterprises located near the trade fair center and easily reached by a shuttle service;
- Quality Area associated essentially with the characteristics of Puglia olive oil in connection with the Mediterranean diet added to the UNESCO world heritage list. Among the initiatives aimed at underscoring the quality of extra virgin olive oil are tastings, culinary demonstrations and a competition among producers;
- Market Area set up with the organizational support of ICE, the Italian Foreign Trade Institute, and addressed to big distributors and businesspeople from abroad to include B2B meetings with exhibitors and visits to olive oil producers;
- Traditional Area planned to highlight the environmental and landscape heritage represented by olive groves to revolve especially around the presentation, by The Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Bari in cooperation with the Ministry for the Environment, of developments in the Life+CENT.OLI.MED project targeted on the conservation of centuries-old olive groves in the Mediterranean region to help reduce biodiversity loss in high nature value farmlands.
UNACOMA
