111th Fieragricola in Verona, Italy

If you’re businessmen or you work in marketing and you’ll use a search engine to find exhibitions of your interest, you’ll definitely find long lists of all kinds of shows held virtually in any corner of the world. Apparently this should prove that exhibitions are a very vital marketing tool but the reality is quite different in fact many of those exhibitions are just regional or even local ones and some of them, due to the major changes occurring in the global market, have long left their great past behind so visiting them would probably be a bad investment in time and money. That’s why choosing the right show to visit is often a puzzle  for any businessmen; this is even more true when the potential visitor is not familiar with a certain Country or region of the world and the shows being held there. Advertising is sometimes misleading because a too good advertising campaign might easily lead the potential visitor to have expectations that won’t be fulfilled by that overly advertised show. Mind you: that means wasting time and money.

Writing is my favorite hobby whilst my business is consulting for internationalization so in this case I wish to offer my advice to make readers from Russia -or anyhow Russian speaking- aware of Fieragricola that will be held in Verona, Italy, between February 6th and 9th. Most foreigners know Verona because of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet so they probably have the perception that iy’s just a nice city to visit and enjoy its romantic atmosphere. That’s one of the aspects of Verona which, anyhow, is much more than that,in particular as far as the world of business is concerned. Verona in fact is a vibrant industrial city surrounded by a countryside with countless farms and vineyards among the best ones in Italy; farming has a long tradition in Verona area that, besides being located in the most fertile lowland in Italy, Pianura Padana, is near Lake Garda. The vicinity to that large and deep lake makes for mild winters in spite of the latitude; of course that’s a boon for farming. So it’s probably due to those favorable conditions (: olive growing is thriving) that agriculture has always been so well developed and rewarding in the area of Verona and it’s easy to understand why agriculture related major exhibitions are held just there. Take for example Vinitaly (www.vinitaly.com, 6-9 April 2014) and Fieracavalli (www.fieracavalli.it, 6-9 November 2014); those two exhibitions are since long time the appointment that no one in the relevant field would like to miss. You may like to know that the oldest one of these shows, Fieracavalli, was held for the first time in 1898.

This year Fieragricola will be divided by sectors. Agrimeccanica is the first one and it’s dedicated to technological innovation of farm machines and equipment. Agriservice, the second one, highlights on innovative services for the world of farming and it’s itself divided into three more sections:

• Salone della Multifunzione (: Multifunction pavilion) introducing proposals aiming at diversifying work and income sources;
• Zoosystem, technologies and equipment for breeding farms, insemination and veterinary instruments;
• Bioenergy Expo, as the name goes the emphasis of this pavilion is on a wiser use of energy in agriculture.

Two pavilions will be dedicated to vineyard and orchard technologies, machines and equipment in fact with the global increase in demand for quality wines and fruits, those two  kinds of cultivation are indeed more important than ever in the agri-business.

Some figures about visitors to Fieragricola now. The average number of visitors is around 135,000 every edition though last year 2013 they were just 101,000 due to a massive snow storm that disrupted normal traffic in many areas of northeastern Italy. Anyway speak for themselves: Fieragricola is the right venue where to get a bird eye view of technologies, machines and attachments for the most advanced farming.

Alberto Bertoni