Designing the farm of tomorrow
BOLOGNA, Italy – The big room at the Bologna Congress Centre was full well before the lights dimmed. Several hundred journalists from dozens of countries took their seats along the long white desks. Some held cameras on gimbals and some listened through interpretation headsets. All of them had come for the traditional eve-of-show briefing of FederUnacoma, the Italian agricultural machinery manufacturers’ association.
Vietnam’s Journal of Rural Industry (Tạp chí Công nghiệp Nông thôn) was honoured to be among the international media invited to attend.
The mood on stage held two messages at once. EIMA International 2026, the 47th edition of the world’s largest agricultural machinery show, opens on Tuesday 10 November with record figures. Yet the market it serves is going through one of its hardest stretches in years.
“The agricultural machinery sector is currently facing an unfavourable economic and geopolitical environment,” said Simona Rapastella, FederUnacoma’s Director General. “Yet EIMA continues to demonstrate extraordinary vitality.”
That tension between a shrinking market and a growing show ran through the whole afternoon. It is the story of global farm technology in 2026.
A show that keeps growing
EIMA’s numbers point one way: up. The 2026 edition brings together 1,800 exhibiting companies, 690 of them from 45 countries outside Italy. Together they will show some 60,000 models of machinery, equipment and components. Trade visitors are expected from 150 countries.
The 2024 edition already set records. It drew 346,800 visitors, 63,100 of them from abroad, and 1,750 exhibitors, according to final figures from FederUnacoma’s magazine Mondo Macchina. This year the organisers have added space instead of turning companies away.
The biggest addition is the so-called Nuvolari area, just outside the exhibition grounds. It holds two temporary halls and a field for live demonstrations of machines that manage land and help prevent landslides and floods. In a year of extreme summer weather across southern Europe, that choice carries a clear message.
The show is organised into 14 specialised sectors and seven thematic showcases. More than 150 conferences and workshops will run over the five days. The theme, “Design Agricultural Future”, appeared on the big screen behind Rapastella, next to a tractor built from bright geometric shapes.
The technology on show is the real headline. An international jury has selected 54 entirely new technologies for the Technical Innovation and Technical Evolution awards. The area for digital systems, farm robots and highly automated machines keeps getting bigger. “Technologies that only a few years ago belonged to the realm of science fiction are now fully developed and commercially available,” the organisers say.
The visitor base is also becoming more global. The Italian Trade Agency (ITA), working with FederUnacoma, is bringing 830 selected buyers and professionals to Bologna, chosen by ITA offices around the world. Dozens of diplomats and government officials are also expected.
A market under pressure
If the show is booming, the market is not. FederUnacoma President Mariateresa Maschio named three forces holding back sales worldwide: inflation, the climate emergency and the crisis in farm incomes.
The United States shows the trend most clearly. Tractor sales there fell 13% between January and September, the fourth year of decline in a row. Between 2021 and 2025, annual US sales dropped from 318,000 to 196,000 units, a loss of more than 100,000 machines.
The Americas are weak almost everywhere. Canada is down more than 9%. Brazil fell 19% in the seven months to July, and Argentina fell 27% in the six months to June.
Europe is mixed but mostly negative. In the nine months to September, sales fell in Germany, France, Spain and, most sharply, Poland. The United Kingdom was the only large European market to grow, up 17.4% after two weak years.
Turkey had the worst result. Higher production costs, lower purchasing power and tight credit cut its tractor sales by 46.2% in the first eight months of the year.
The two Asian giants go against the trend. In China and above all in India, government incentive schemes are keeping farmers buying. India registered nearly 900,000 tractors in the first nine months of the year, up 15%.
Italy feels the chill at home
The host country is not immune. Italy’s market started 2026 strongly, helped by public incentives. Then it turned in late spring, and the decline continued through September and October.
“The decline in agricultural incomes, caused by the difficult economic climate and exacerbated by last summer’s extreme weather conditions, has weakened farmers’ investment capacity,” Maschio said.
Registration data to October, from the Ministry of Transport, show the damage. Tractor sales fell 5.4% to 13,592 units. Trailers fell 7.3% and transporters 9%. Only combine harvesters (+10.4%) and telehandlers (+4.9%) stayed positive, and both lost speed.
FederUnacoma expects the total production value of Italy’s agricultural machinery industry to fall 4.3% in 2026, to €13.7 billion. Tractor production should fall 4.7% to €1.8 billion. Exports are also expected to shrink: tractors by 3.4% to €1.3 billion, and other farm machinery by 5.1% to €4.1 billion. Components are the only bright spot, forecast to grow 0.8% to €3.6 billion.
Future goals, present challenges
Maschio’s presentation set out the industry’s thinking on one slide, titled in Italian “Gli obiettivi futuri, le sfide attuali”: future goals, present challenges. It had four panels.
1. The context: slowing demand, tougher competition, and foreign trade split up by protectionism and geopolitical tension.
2. The mission: combine productivity with sustainability, make new land fertile, improve working conditions, and bring a new generation of entrepreneurs and technicians into farming.
3. The supply chain: the federation works in Italy and in Europe on supply-chain strategies covering machine purchases, access to credit, safety, technical support and training.
4. Public support: multi-year public programmes matter. The association welcomes the revised Industry 4.0 machinery tax credit but wants other tools to continue too.
The weak market, Maschio argued, does not mean farmers need fewer machines. “Potential demand for machinery is expected to remain high,” she said, “as the agricultural sector must address major challenges in terms of productivity, sustainability, quality and safety, all of which require the use of technologically advanced machinery.”
The market for these machines is also wider than farming itself. Many models are used for land reclamation, land management, bioenergy supply chains and the care of parks and green spaces. Research firm ExportPlanning expects trade in the sector to grow by about 4.5% a year between 2026 and 2029, driven partly by these related uses.
The practical demand to governments is straightforward: help farms invest. Maschio called the recently renewed Industry 4.0 tax incentives “of strategic importance” because they strengthen farms’ capacity to buy new equipment.
A meeting point for the world’s farmers
The audience in Bologna showed EIMA’s reach better than any statistic. Reporters from Europe, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia sat side by side. Many followed the speeches through simultaneous interpretation. After the briefing, groups of foreign journalists were led through the halls of the Congress Centre.
This international pull is deliberate. FederUnacoma runs a Special Guest programme, and the Italian Trade Agency brings in hand-picked buyer delegations. Earlier this year the federation announced large groups from Spain, Morocco and Turkey, as well as closer ties with Ethiopia.
For emerging farm economies, the timing matters. While sales fall in the mature markets of North America and Europe, the growth is in Asia and Africa. These regions still have low levels of mechanisation, small farms and a pressing need to raise yields as the climate changes.
Vietnam is a good example. At a 2024 seminar organised with the Italian Embassy in Hanoi, Vietnamese officials said the country’s mechanisation level remained low compared with regional peers. They added that domestic manufacturers could meet only about 32% of demand. Italy already ranks among Vietnam’s top 20 suppliers of agricultural machinery, according to the Italian Trade Office in Vietnam. Compact machines for small plots, precision tools for rice and fruit, and equipment for flood and landslide prevention all match needs in the Mekong Delta and the northern uplands. These are exactly the categories on show in Bologna this week.
The lesson from India and China is also relevant to Vietnam and its neighbours. Where governments support farm investment with clear, multi-year programmes, tractor sales grow even in a weak global market.
Machines for a new era of peace
The briefing ended on a political note, not a technical one. “In a scenario characterised by geopolitical tensions and protectionism, politics is called upon to implement measures to promote the ability of agricultural businesses to invest in new technologies,” Maschio said.
She then went further. “At this historic juncture, politics has, above all, the task of helping to revive dialogue between countries by promoting cooperation. The development of agriculture is a fundamental prerequisite for economic well-being and social security; it is a crucial step towards a new era of peace.”
Rapastella made a similar point about the show itself. “Like all major international trade exhibitions, EIMA embodies the values of progress and cooperation,” she said. Beyond business, it aims to offer “a rewarding human experience, built on personal relationships, a sense of community and mutual trust.”
When the halls open on Tuesday morning, the test will be simple. Can a record show turn into orders for a market that needs them? Visitors from 150 countries will spend five days walking past robots, autonomous tractors and drones. Many of them will be asking the same question: which of these machines can my farmers actually afford?
The answer will depend less on the engineers in Bologna than on governments, banks and farm incomes back home. Still, as the Italian manufacturers keep reminding the world, the need for machines has not gone away. Only the money to buy them has.
