Agriculture up close

The only constant in our local agriculture is change! Today, through a constantly advancing mechanization and intensification, we have a market and production-oriented agriculture with specialized farms, especially in fruit and wine growing as well as dairy farming. While the size of farming land in South Tyrol has shrunk over the years, we have succeeded in increasing the quantities and above all the quality of the products, also thanks to smaller farms, still active in large numbers. The apple became a real model of success for local agriculture: today South Tyrol is the largest contiguous fruit growing area in Europe.

The use of pesticides has also changed: from increasingly targeted use in smaller quantities to the complete renunciation of synthetic pesticides, farmers here too are complying with the expectations of a constantly growing number of environmentally conscious consumers.

We as FieraMesse have been accompanying these changes through our events. The first specialized trade show Agrialp was born in 1971. Since 1996, we have been home to Interpoma, which every two years makes Bolzano the world capital of apples. Biolife came in third, and has become the most important platform for organic quality products in the entire region. The increasingly important niche of direct marketing is on the other hand the focus of our new entry Direttissima.