The next key venue for potato professionals in Europe is PotatoEurope, the outdoor trade fair for potato cultivation and machinery, held on September 7 and 8, 2022, at the estate Rittergut Bockerode in Springe-Mittelrode near Hanover, Germany.
The international potato industry will be presenting a comprehensive range of information. PotatoEurope 2022 offers growers and companies from the upstream and downstream sectors access to a specialist platform that delivers information on all aspects of modern potato production and processing. The focus at the trade fair will be on breeding, fertilization, plant protection, technology for production and processing, as well as trade. Trial plots along with machinery demonstrations for planting, harvesting, loading and mechanical weed control as well as information events round off the technical offerings.
PotatoEurope 2022 is organized by DLG (German Agricultural Society) and is supported by the German Potato Industry Association (Union der Deutschen Kartoffelwirtschaft e.V. – UNIKA). More than 200 exhibitors and around 10,000 trade visitors are expected. Registration deadline for exhibitors planning to use the trial plots is 28 February 2022. Stand areas that are located in the field or in the marquee hall as well as participation in the machinery demonstrations can be registered until April 29, 2022. The PotatoEurope trade fair takes place annually alternating between Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Germany. Each country hosts PotatoEurope every four years.
Located some 30 km southwest of the center of Hanover, the estate of Rittergut Bockerode has also hosted PotatoEurope in 2006, 2010, 2014 and 2018. The international airport Hanover-Langenhagen and the ICE train station, Hannover-Hauptbahnhof, are both directly connected with the local train via a shuttle and thus offer convenient travel options, also from outside Germany.
Germany’s potato industry
In Germany, potato cultivation takes place on more than 27,000 farms with a combined area varying between 250,000 – 270,000 hectares. On average, Germany produces 10 to 11 million tonnes of potatoes annually, making it the largest potato producer in the European Union (EU). The number of potato varieties have increased by over 58 percent in the last ten years from 345 in 2010 to 545 potato varieties approved in Germany in 2020.
This sector generates an estimated value added return of more than 3 billion Euro annually through sales of three main income streams: food, industrial and seed potatoes.
These dimensions underline the importance of the potato sector in Germany – and the industry’s important position the EU – yet, on average, the German potato crop only accounts for about two percent of the country’s farmland.
