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Last year brought lots of big surprises for agriculture. Following the latest financial crisis, the international stock markets and also the physical markets are being significantly affected by substantial values. Current reports assume that despite a record harvest in 2007 and an associated increase in agricultural production volumes, there is still a relative shortage of agri-cultural raw materials such as wheat.

On one hand this accounts for the continuously rising global demand for seed for both food and energy, which has led to agricultural stocks being virtually used up, and on the other side it explains why many agricultural nations such as the USA or Kazakhstan need their production for their own requirements and are able to export only a little or even none at all. All in all, many experts are assuming that prices for the most important crop varieties will remain at a high level.

Many reports in the media are currently devoted to developments in the price of agricultural commodities. They deal with the reasons and responsibilities for a global food crisis due to high prices. At the same time there are frequent references to the use of agricultural commodities for the production of bioenergy. The flow of huge amounts of money into the commodities exchanges is also throwing up ethical questions.

Conversely, it is a frequently overlooked fact that research in the field of plant cultivation in the developing countries is carried out in part under the most miserable conditions. While increasingly more efficient cultivars are being bred in highly developed countries in Europe and America and productivity is constantly rising, research in the developing countries is practically at a standstill. Nowadays, challenges such as climate change and the growing demand for commodities are shaping the landscape. More importantly, rising prices ought really to be incentive enough to encourage work on the productivity of new cultivars. Many countries import what they lack to supply the population. This dependency on exporting countries goes well as long as the major exporters of agricultural commodities have sufficient volumes available for export, which these days is often no longer the case. All of this underlines the need for professional research and testing of cultivars in order to meet these challenges.

In most of the developing countries, research and development is carried out through state-financed institutes. The experience gained by WINTERSTEIGER, whose employees are also regularly travelling in developing countries, shows that most of the developing countries in Asia and Africa have either no or very antiquated sowing, harvesting and laboratory technology available to research and test cultivars. India's state-run research centre in New Delhi (IARI), for example, has 25-year old plot combines that no longer permit accurate results.

So does this crisis not also create a huge opportunity? In our opinion, a way out of the global food crisis much reported at present must inevitably touch on the professional research and development of seed. Furthermore, we hope that organisations such as the WTO and FAO will devote themselves seriously to this topic in the future and support developing countries in building up their research and development.

WINTERSTEIGER AG is a special machine constructor from Upper Austria and has concentrated on niche markets since its establishment in 1953. Today WINTERSTEIGER is a global market leader in each of its three business divisions:
- Division SEEDMECH: Total solutions for agricultural field experiments
- Division SPORTS: Total solutions for the rental and servicing of skis and snowboards
- Division WOODTECH: Total solutions for precise thin-cutting of wood

WINTERSTEIGER’s Division SEEDMECH provides solutions for the entire process of agricultural field experimentation. This enables the research, breeding, testing and seed increases of agricultural crops and special crops at the highest level. The product range covers plot combines, plot seeders, laboratory equipment and equipment for fertilising and plant protection.
Headquarters in the Upper Austrian town of Ried/Innkreis, 16 proprietary company sites and 60 subsidiary offices supply a total of 130 countries throughout the world. This secures WINTERSTEIGER an export share of approximately 88%. Group sales of the enterprise, which employs around 600 staff, were just short of EUR 85 million in 2007.

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