Origins
With the foundation of the International DLG Crop Production Center (ICP) in Bernburg-Strenzfeld, DLG is making a contribution to Germany as a centre of agriculture and research and is fostering applied crop production research.
The backdrop to its foundation was a trend that has been observed for a number of years, namely that application-oriented and practical research and development are in decline in Germany's agronomic landscape and that the transfer of research results to agricultural practice is often found to be lacking. DLG intends to counteract this trend with the ICP.
In addition, DLG was searching for a specific location for those of its activities which are tied to farmland (open-air exhibitions, open-air agricultural machinery tests, field trials), a location that can be optimally oriented to these activities in the long term. The prerequisites for this were established by setting up the ICP.
Concept of the ICP
Since its foundation in 1885, DLG's fundamental mission has been to develop potential solutions for the central problem areas of agriculture through cooperation between farmers, scientists, consultants and agribusiness. Its central leitmotif is to drive forwards technical, biological, organisational, scientific and social progress.
Development
Since 2010, dozens of individual projects have already been implemented at the ICP in the five action areas of application-oriented research and development, open-air exhibitions and demonstrations, open-air agricultural machinery tests, advanced training events and public relations work.
Foundation
DLG President Carl-Albrecht Bartmer, Dr Reiner Haseloff, Prime Minister of Saxony-Anhalt, Hermann Onko Aikens, former Minister for Agriculture and the Environment of Saxony-Anhalt, Dr Lothar Hövelmann, managing director of the DLG Competence Center Agriculture, Andreas Steul, head of ICP until 2015