Germany: PotatoEurope draws 10,100 visitors from 79 countries in first co-location with SugarBeet Expo

PotatoEurope 2026 and the inaugural SugarBeet Expo were held on 9 and 10 September on the farmland of the Rittergut Gestorf estate at Springe, near Hanover in Lower Saxony. Organised by the German Agricultural Society (DLG) under the banner “Make Your Business Grow”, the two open-field events brought together around 300 exhibitors covering the full value chain — breeding and seed material, inputs, digital tools, machinery, harvesting, logistics and processing.

According to the organiser, some 10,100 trade visitors from 79 countries attended. The audience comprised growers, contractors, advisers and representatives from industry and trade. More than 31% of visitors travelled from outside Germany, and roughly half the exhibitors were international. The figure fell short of DLG’s pre-event forecast of 12,000, though the 2026 edition combined a new venue with PotatoEurope’s first return to Germany in four years.

Two root crops, one site

Co-locating PotatoEurope with the first SugarBeet Expo was the format experiment of the year. The rationale is straightforward: a substantial share of German arable farms grows potatoes and sugar beet in the same rotation, and suppliers of machinery and crop protection products frequently serve both segments. Springe sits in one of Germany’s core beet-growing regions.

Visitor response to the format was strong. First results from the exhibition survey put overall satisfaction at 96%, with more than 95% rating the parallel staging positively. The next German edition of PotatoEurope is scheduled for 2030, and 73% of those surveyed said they intended to return.

The investment indicator was equally firm: 68% of visitors said they are planning investments in their potato operations over the next two years.

Wilfried Wolf, project manager for both events, argued that potatoes and sugar beet have more in common than not — both crops make heavy demands on agronomy, machinery and management, and both must be produced economically and with efficient use of resources. Bringing the two specialist communities to a single site, in his view, is where the added value of the combined format lies.

Drought, pest pressure and a shrinking toolbox

Opening the events, DLG President Hubertus Paetow set out the pressures facing root crop production. Climate change is driving more frequent weather extremes, and the drought of summer 2026 caused marked regional yield losses for German potato and sugar beet growers. Price volatility on global markets shaped by geopolitical tension compounds the problem.

Paetow put the combined contribution of the two crops at around 16% of German crop production turnover, and identified adapting production systems to shifting climatic and economic conditions as the sector’s central task if both crops are to remain profitable in domestic and international competition. He singled out pest pressure — in particular the planthopper Pentastiridius leporinus — set against an increasingly narrow range of available crop protection active substances.

Olaf Feuerborn, president of UNIKA, the German potato industry association and an honorary partner of PotatoEurope, underlined the crop’s role in food security. Its high yield potential, he noted, delivers a multiple of the harvest achievable from cereals on the same area. He also pressed the case for an active substance portfolio adequate to the new insect pests now establishing in Germany and Europe, adding that the challenges ahead can only be addressed through coordinated action across the whole value chain.

Dr Stefan Streng, chairman of the sugar industry association WVZ and honorary partner of SugarBeet Expo, pointed to the SBR and Stolbur complex — diseases that cost significant yield and whose containment demands new answers and close cooperation within the sector. Both pathogens are transmitted by the same planthopper species, which makes the problem a shared one across potatoes and beet. Streng also spoke against the possible introduction of a sugar tax in Germany, arguing that the market environment is already difficult enough.

AI in seed potato selection

The technical programme ran across both days on the DLG Expert Stage, supplemented by DLG Spotlights on digital farming, agricultural logistics and organic potatoes.

One session examined artificial intelligence in seed potato selection. Matthias Hempe of FarmBlick GmbH and Martin Rave of Europlant Innovation GmbH & Co. KG set out what the technology can currently deliver in detecting disease.

The prerequisite for a workable application, both stressed, is an extensive and reliable data foundation. Drone imagery can capture healthy and suspect plants across trial plots and assign them spatially. Where that information is collected and evaluated collectively, a database builds up incrementally, providing the basis on which algorithms for automated plant selection can be developed and refined. Training an AI system to reliably identify diseased plants requires several thousand images; each correctly recorded and confirmed case expands the dataset and improves accuracy.

The conclusion drawn from the session was that effective use of AI depends on patience, continuous data collection and systematic feedback between application and analysis.

Optical sorting against the labour shortage

Felix Rodewald, technical officer at the Dethlingen trial station, presented opto-electronic sorting as the future of potato grading. The case for the technology rests on labour scarcity and tightening quality requirements: automated systems cut manual input and work without the fatigue effects that degrade human performance over a shift.

Rodewald distinguished three categories of equipment:

Equipment type	Function	Throughput / features
Foreign body separators	Remove stones and other foreign material using ejector fingers	Up to 100 tonnes per hour
Quality graders	Detect wireworm damage, mechanical injury and black spot	Camera-based defect recognition
Size graders	Measure tubers by shape, volume and size	Multiple cameras and 3D technology; weight sorting possible via volume and density

The operating principle is common to all three: sensors and cameras capture the tubers, the data is evaluated, and the resulting classification drives the sorting operations.

One caveat carried weight for prospective buyers. No machine works on a plug-and-play basis. Calibration and implementation demand considerable time in the early stages, and the labour requirement shifts from the seasonal worker who would otherwise sort by hand to the farm manager.

Decarbonising beet production

Specialists from Nordzucker AG and Yara addressed the carbon footprint of sugar beet production. Decarbonising food and ingredient manufacture reaches across the entire chain: food industry and retail groups seeking to cut their own emissions depend on greenhouse gas data from upstream suppliers, and the most effective reduction steps come from coordinated action along the chain.

The principal lever in beet cultivation is fertiliser application, and therefore the shift to green fertilisers produced with a rising share of renewable energy. A second option is switching machinery from fossil fuel to HVO — diesel derived from biogenic residues such as used cooking oils.

Exhibitor assessments

Exhibitors reported positively on the commercial outcome. Franz Behm of the technical office at GAUGELE GmbH said the event allowed direct conversation with growers over a coffee at the stand rather than by phone or email, and that on questions of harvesting, crop storage and sector trends this face-to-face contact proved more productive. Customer retention and the direct line to growers, in his assessment, were the exhibition’s main return.

Jörg Renatus, managing director of EUROPLANT Pflanzenzucht GmbH, noted that PotatoEurope comes to Germany only once every four years, making this edition close to a home fixture for the company. He described visitor response as very good, highlighting the technical calibre of the audience and the high proportion of international attendees, which allowed the company to present its new high-performance varieties in detailed discussion with customers and partners from Germany and abroad.

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Sources: DLG (Deutsche Landwirtschafts-Gesellschaft) press materials; FreshPlaza, 10 and 11 September 2026; top agrar; agrarzeitung; profi; Chamber of Agriculture of Lower Saxony.

Note: statements by participants are reported indirectly; originals in German.