What are the highlights of a top livestock exhibition? A preview of the exciting content
In mid-November, EuroTier, the international livestock exhibition organized by the German Agricultural Society, was held at the Hannover Exhibition Grounds, with 2,360 exhibitors from 49 countries participating and nearly 150,000 visitors, and this time 116 Chinese companies “banding together to go abroad” and making a concentrated appearance also became one of the highlights of this livestock exhibition.
The large number of exhibiting companies and visitors is because the exhibition not only displays rich content, covering a variety of leading products in fields such as cattle, pigs, poultry, aquaculture, veterinary medicine and drugs, and biomass energy; the exhibition also gathers experts and scholars from industry, agriculture, research and consulting institutions to discuss and predict industry trends, and is therefore known in the industry as a weather vane for animal husbandry, with far-reaching influence. As a result, exhibitors from countries around the world all want to show their highlights, so as to gain more promotion and cooperation opportunities. So where are the highlights of a top livestock exhibition? And what education and inspiration can it give us?
The refinement and innovation of technological inventions will push the development of animal husbandry into the fast lane. For example, the product that won this year's exhibition innovation silver award is a milking device, whose original purpose is to let dairy cows be milked comfortably, thereby increasing milk yield and quality. But what appears to be simple technological equipment actually requires wireless sensing, round-the-clock monitoring, cloud server support and final implementation terminal equipment, as well as multiple sets of equipment and software and hardware as support. Similarly, technologies such as the “sick pig pick-up machine” and the rotary goat milking platform obviously raise the technological content of animal husbandry and drive the modern transformation of animal husbandry, making it convenient and efficient.
Behind technology is a renewal of concepts, just as Reinhard Grandke, chief executive officer of the German Agricultural Society, said: in the past we placed more emphasis on competition in land area and animal inventory in animal husbandry, showing the characteristics of extensive management and evaluation concepts. With greater attention to environmental protection and the improvement of laws and regulations, animal husbandry has also shown a trend of transition toward refined and intensive management. This renewal of concepts is also shown in appropriately increasing the technological density of animal husbandry, but on this point alone, our country's industry-university-research system for animal husbandry still needs to be strengthened.
⟦NL> What needs to change is not only technological upgrading, but also greater attention to animal welfare in livestock and other areas. When it comes to animal welfare, many veteran livestock keepers cannot help but scoff, believing that raising livestock itself is simply unreasonable. However, practice has proven that the effective implementation of welfare such as animal safety and health, comfort, adequate nutrition, disease immunity and veterinary treatment, and humane slaughter can directly affect the quality and level of livestock breeding, and can also reflect the cultural level and degree of civilization of a country's animal husbandry development.
It must be mentioned that this time 116 Chinese companies “banded together to go abroad”, using unified display boards and logos, which drew the sideways glances of many exhibiting companies. For the country with the world's largest population, exhibiting companies from all countries also include China, this huge consumer market, in their sales plans; and for our country's livestock companies, the various innovative technologies and mature management models of foreign livestock companies are obviously more worthy of our “going abroad” to learn from. It is precisely this complementary demand that has ensured this exhibition achieved its purpose as an effective communication link, but from the perspective of the development direction and path of a livestock weather vane, the road we need to travel is still very long and far.