History of Agricultural Engineering 75 Conferences on Agricultural Engineering, a Success Story

The paper is a revised version of the key note speech at LAND.TECHNIK AgEng 2017 Conference Hannover, Nov. 10-11, 2017, ahead of AGRITECHNICA 2017. The first periodic German conference on agricultural engineering took place 1934 in Berlin, initiated and directed by Dr.-Ing. Willi Kloth. Basic data of all 75 conferences are listed in two tables. The WW II forced an interruption, Kloth succeeded 1951 with a renewal at FAL Braunschweig. The VDI Branch of Agricultural Engineering became engaged from 1962 co-operating with MEG from 1983. In 1990, the 48. conference was organized in Berlin commonly with AgEng testing a new European format and in 2006, the 64. conference was combined with the XVI. CIGR World Congress and AgEng'06 in Bonn. The decision to go to Hannover in the uneven years from 2001 (ahead of AGRITECHNICA at the fair ground) and the merger with AgEng conferences in odd years from 2007 completed the success story.