In the coming years, Europe and North America will keep taking the lead in the ag machinery industry. “Yet an increasing role will be played by countries such as Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Thailand, as well as countries in Africa”, said Mariateresa Maschio, President of FederUnacoma, at the occasion of the opening of the EIMA ag machinery tradeshow in Bologna, Italy.
Population growth, the source of this growing demand for ag technologies, will also be decisive in Africa, starting with Nigeria, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The agricultural machinery sector is expected to grow significantly in the coming years, but the geography of the markets will change. The major markets in Europe and North America will maintain a high level of investment to ensure high quality standards, and the two Asian giants India and China will tend to stabilize mechanization on the large quantities achieved in recent years, but the emerging markets will be those of Southeast Asia and Africa, according to Mrs Maschio.
The demand for agricultural machinery is destined to grow significantly – as was explained during the conference by Mariateresa Maschio – in those regions of the world where there is a lot of agricultural development due to population growth, and thus much greater technological equipment is needed than those currently used.
A key country is Indonesia, which even today has nearly 300 million inhabitants, making it one of the most populous in the world and destined to further increase its demographic weight in the coming years. In Indonesia, imports of agricultural machinery have been growing steadily for the past 15 years, and have gone from EUR 140 million in 2009 to almost EUR 700 million in 2023 (average growth of 8.6% per year), with a further increase in the next four years 2024-2027 forecast at 6.7% per year.
But imports of agricultural machinery are also growing in other densely populated countries in Southeast Asia. Vietnam (100 million inhabitants) expects imports to increase by 6.2% annually over the next four years; the Philippines (110 million inhabitants) should increase imports by 7.8% over the next four years; while Thailand (71 million inhabitants), after a very slow growth in the last 15 years equal to just 1% average per year, is expected to move to an annual increase of 6.8% in the period 2024-2027.
The demographic variable is even more influential on the African continent, if it is true that Sub-Saharan Africa alone will account for 50% of the world’s population growth in 2050. On the African continent, Nigeria, which already has 230 million inhabitants and will have over 400 million in 2050 (making it the third most populous country in the world) stands out, followed by Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, both well over 100 million inhabitants and destined to see significant growth in the next twenty years, entering the ranks of the 10 most populous countries on the planet.
In Nigeria, only 46% of cultivable land is currently used, and in the Democratic Republic of Congo a meagre 10% of arable land is currently used for agriculture. Thus, putting new territories into production is a priority for these and other countries on the continent, with an increase in demand for technologies in the immediate future (from now until 2027, the import of agricultural machinery will grow by 7% per year in Ethiopia and 12% in Congo), but even more over the next twenty years.
