Overview
- Organizers list roughly 1,600 exhibitors from about 50 countries and forecast around 325,000 visitors for the ten‑day fair.
- Live animals return to the exhibition halls after last year’s foot‑and‑mouth disease restrictions limited displays to replicas.
- A large 'Wir haben es satt' march is scheduled for Saturday, with police reporting 9,000 registered participants from a coalition of about 60 groups criticizing regulatory rollbacks.
- Opening events featured Agriculture Minister Alois Rainer, Berlin’s Kai Wegner, EU Agriculture Commissioner Christophe Hansen and Mecklenburg‑Vorpommern as partner region.
- Policy themes highlighted include food prices and resilience, with Germany launching a school‑meals support program through the development ministry and state ministers pushing farm sector relief.