Sursa foto: Facebook / Claas
Agriculture does not depend on a pandemic, crops are growing anyway, so farmers have had to deal with the challenging conditions during the pandemic, says Michael Beier, CEO of CLAAS Regional Center South East Europe SRL, one of the largest players on the agricultural machinery market in Romania.
According to him, Romanian agriculture is still in a kind of transition, so the modernization of the existing fleet of equipment remains a major issue. Our country has a lot of outdated equipment, which makes the car fleet not at all efficient.
He argues that digitization in agriculture is mandatory because it leads to an increase in efficiency, a decrease in consumption, fuel, use of pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers.
Another major challenge is related to human resources, as there are not enough qualified people, both on the producer side and at farm level. „We need young, well-educated people who know how to use state-of-the-art equipment”, says Beier.
The CLAAS representative considers that Romania needs a dual education system, which would really support not only agriculture, but also any other kind of industries.
Another challenge, according to the company, is the Romanian infrastructure that needs to be modernized, because it leads to a huge waste of time.
Watch FULL VIDEO INTERVIEW with Michael Beier, Chief Executive Officer of CLAAS Regional Center South East Europe SRL
Editing: Ovidiu Micsik, Inquam Photos
Economedia: How was the past year and a half for CLAAS, what problems did you encounter because of the pandemic and what solutions did you find, in order to make the company more resilient?
Michael Beier: To be honest, before the escalation of the pandemic, each of us was more or less convinced that this is another wave of another virus. So in the beginning in January it was like: „We have to be careful, we have to take all the already well-known measures”. But with the escalation, with the first lockdown, we were forced to stop our activities in a way that all of us – except the ones who are directly involved in the provision of spare parts, in the distribution of spare parts – we all went immediately to the home offices. It was surprising how fast it was possible to switch to the online mode, because obviously our IT was almost prepared. And then it was up to the management of our company to establish new regulations in terms of how we are taking care of our employees, how we are keeping the contact. This was completely new for us. It is clear: being all the time in the same office building with a direct contact to people, you have different kinds of steering the activity in place, in comparison to being decentralized and being available only by phone or by video conference systems.
So this was, for the beginning, a challenge for all of us, but I think over the first weeks we had established sufficient regulations and processes, which have assured that this necessary contact in between all of our departments and between our employees remains on the same level.
Have you encountered problems like supply chain disruptions, problems at the borders, with supplying equipment or parts?
This was in the beginning of the pandemic a quite serious challenge for us, especially when you take into consideration that agricultural machinery is mainly delivered in March, April, May. So that was a situation when we acknowledged that on the borders we had to deal with huge delays. Nevertheless, the logistic chain recovered. So in the first wave of the pandemic we have managed to be on time.
So of course it was a little bit more complicated to support the contact to our customers; our business is very much related to personal contact. We are talking about investment goods, so our machinery is considered investment goods. And of course before ordering a machine we have to provide advice to customers, we have to adapt machines to the individual needs of our customers. And this was a challenge.
What is staying with us after this pandemic?
First of all, what we take with us is the experience. We have understood very well how important it is to have a close contact to our people. So this in our business will remain the most important subject.
Of course, taking into consideration that we were very limited by travelling to our customers, we have also identified things like social media to keep in contact with our market, with our customers, on the one hand. On the other hand, of course, in the meantime a lot of coordination in between the production plants and us here, locally, in Romania, is based now on videoconferences. And I think this is something where we have also increased our efficiency. So less travelling, more focusing on the individual tasks. This is something as a positive effect from out of this crisis.
Of course, as I said beforehand, business is done between people, and therefore you have to have the personal contact. But everybody is now more careful before agreeing on a business trip or on a meeting, which is outside of our location. We are checking more carefully if this is really necessary or if we can do that even online.
Did the pandemic affect demand for agricultural equipment in Romania or did it postpone decisions, investments?
Agriculture is not depending on a pandemic. The crops are growing anyhow. So the farmers had to deal with these challenging conditions, not being able to welcome suppliers, not being able to release their employees for a weekend and things like these, in order to protect the functionality of the farm. Nevertheless, the demand was still there, it is still there. The Romanian agriculture is still in a kind of a transition, so the modernization of the existing machine part remains a major subject for the Romanian agriculture.
What does digitalization mean in the agricultural sector and what digitalization projects do you have at CLAAS?
Digitalization in agriculture is mandatory, because this leads to an increase in efficiency, a decrease of consumption, of fuel, as an example. Here we are using our state-of-the-art solutions, systems, supporting the self-optimization of agricultural machinery to increase efficiency, to reduce consumption, to reduce losses. Here we are fully in line with the common sense of pushing the digitalization.
You might know that CLAAS has a daughter company inside the CLAAS Group, which is called CLAAS Electronic Systems. The main subject of this subdivision is digitalization without any doubts. Here we see the biggest potential in the future to make all operations connected to agricultural machinery more efficient.
Did the pandemic affect jobs anyhow and what is the future of jobs in agriculture?
When we are talking about agriculture in general, the use of agricultural machinery, on the one hand, the owners of farms, on the other hand, the challenge is really to have transparency, to have data available for each and every single process inside a farm. So here we see the need to change also a little bit the orientation on farm level.
When it comes to the producers, of course the classical machine construction, the classical machine building has changed. Electronic components, stirring systems, systems allowing self-optimizations of agricultural machine, this is already mandatory, this is already a substantial part of our jobs.
Here we have seen over the last year a change in the profile of our employees towards awareness, how the systems can be used, how to increase efficiency of the mechanic system.
You might know that we have our own CLAAS professional school. We are educating young people. And also here the classical mechanic is slowly being replaced by a mechanic electronic specialist, which are now trained in both directions. Due to the fact that agricultural machines is a high piece of equipment, I would really call it on a high-tech level.
What is your vision on how Green Deal will affect agriculture? We know it will affect what we eat, how we eat. Is there an impact on CLAAS?
Definitely. As I said before, we are very much focused on increase of efficiency and reduction of costs, costs connected to fuel consumption, which automatically means less pollution. Here we are working very strongly also with universities together to develop new kinds of electronic systems which are making the whole process even more efficient. We have that definitely on our agenda. And we see also our job in a way that we have also to steer our customers in a good manner. We are not only the provider of agricultural machinery, but we are also very much focused on increasing the level of transparency on a farm level. Data connect is one of the keywords here. This leads to more transparency, how much fertilizer I have to use and things like these. The idea is to reduce the usage of pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers down to the minimum. This is definitely on our agenda. We are collaborating very closely with other companies inside our industry, outside our industry, in order to have really the achievement in terms of reduction of pollution at the end of the day.
And I know as such in several countries agriculture has a not so good reputation. But in my opinion, we are part of the solution, the driver of the Green Deal and not part of the problem.
Does the agricultural equipment park have an impact on achieving Romania’s full agricultural potential?
By travelling through the country, and I do that very often, of course I see state-of-the-art equipment on the farms, on the one hand. On the other hand, I see a lot of outdated machinery. In my opinion, we need also a strong regulation concerning the pollution of agricultural machines, stronger regulations, because the outdated machine park we have in Romania is first of all not efficient at all. When you see a tractor working on the field, a 30 years old tractor, then you can imagine that this engine does not correspond at all with all the pollution regulations we have already on the European level. This is a little bit connected to the idea of how to be part of this Green Deal.
On the other hand, coming back to the efficiency, today the machines have productivity, capacity, which is much, much higher. I’m using, instead of three or four older generation combines, now we use one. We are working with up to 14 meter. In the older days it was 6 meters or even 5 meters. You can imagine how efficient or inefficient sometimes the usage of outdated machinery is in reality.
This is also one of our drops, supporting the transparency on farm level, where are hidden costs, where a farm is covering too high expensives, to run an outdated machine park. This kind of advisory is also part of what we are doing on a daily basis.
What are in your vision the most urgent problems of the agricultural sector, in Romania? And maybe you could sketch some solutions to them?
First of all, I would say that one of the major challenges is connected to human resources. We really have not enough qualified people on our side, i mean on the manufacturer side and on farm level. We need young people, well educated, knowing how to use state-of-the-art equipment. What is really important to run a farm in an efficient manner. From our perspective, here the education as such is a major point.
When it comes to the people who are serving agricultural machinery, you know we have in Germany this dual education system in place, which we are missing unfortunately here in Romania. This would really support not only the agriculture, but any kind of other industries as well.
On the other hand, another challenge of course is the Romanian infrastructure which needs to be modernized. By travelling through the country many, many times, it is visible, you can feel it how much time you are losing because of the lack of this efficient infrastructure.
Coming back to the agriculture, the agriculture is a part of the solution and not a part of the problem. We need to work strongly on a better reputation of the agriculture, together with the authorities. It might be a good idea to have something like an imagine campaign for the agriculture, which indirectly also could support the missing menpower on farm level.
So those are the major challenges. Of course bureaucracy. So by talking to our customers nearly on a daily basis, it is easy to understand that they have to invest a lot of time in preparation of any kind of papers, documents, necessary to run their business.
Digitalization – this is one of the main directions where we also need to include the agriculture and all processes in between farms and authorities.
And, last but not least, we need a strong support for the implementation of data systems, allowing farmers to have real transparency, systems which are demonstating in real time the condition of the individual fields. Here we would like to have a stronger support for our industry.