About agrarheute

agrarheute

agrarheute is one of Germany's leading agricultural media brands, combining the news portal agrarheute.com with trade magazines for the farming industry. Created in 2017 when the Deutscher Landwirtschaftsverlag (dlv) merged its portal and its specialist magazines DLZ-Agrarmagazin, Agrarmanager and Joule into a single media brand, agrarheute serves farmers, agricultural contractors, dealers and agribusiness professionals with daily news, market reports, machinery tests and management advice. The portal, online since 2007, ranks among the most-visited agricultural websites in the German-speaking world, and the brand's print magazines continue a publishing lineage that reaches back to 1950.

Overview

agrarheute addresses the full professional world of German agriculture: arable farmers, livestock producers, agricultural contractors, machinery dealers, consultants and everyone in the agribusiness value chain. The brand's core promise is practical currency — what is happening in agricultural policy, what grain and milk prices are doing, which machines perform in the field test, and how farm businesses should respond. That service orientation reflects the economics of modern farming: with tight margins, volatile commodity markets and dense regulation, German farmers depend on fast, reliable professional information.

The digital center is agrarheute.com, a continuously updated news portal covering agricultural policy, markets, crop production, livestock, agricultural technology, farm management and rural life. Market reporting is a signature strength: regular market reports with experts such as Dr. Olaf Zinke track prices for grain, milk, fertilizer and other inputs, giving farmers decision-relevant data. Machinery tests — tractors, combines, tillage equipment in practical trials — serve the industry's major investment decisions, with test engineers assessing performance, fuel consumption, handling and operating costs under realistic farm conditions. The print magazines under the agrarheute brand carry the longer-form journalism: background reports, farm portraits and management features that give readers the context behind the headlines.

The brand also operates as a multimedia platform. agrarheute-tv produces weekly video formats, including the week-in-review "Die Woche in sieben Minuten" and the "Hofreport" farm-visit series, distributed via YouTube to an audience that increasingly consumes professional information as video. The landlive.de community platform provides discussion forums where farmers exchange experience on crops, machinery and policy. Awards such as the CERES AWARD — the brand's recognition for entrepreneurial farmers — extend agrarheute's role from reporting on agriculture to celebrating it, with the award's finalists and winners generating some of the brand's most-read content each year.

History

The agrarheute brand's roots run deep into post-war German agricultural publishing. Its oldest predecessor was "Der Traktor – Arbeitsersparnis und Technik in der Landwirtschaft," published from 1950 to 1953, which became the "Deutsche landtechnische Zeitschrift DLZ" (1954–1965), then "Die landtechnische Zeitschrift DLZ" (1966–1988), and from 1989 the "DLZ – die landwirtschaftliche Zeitschrift für Produktion, Technik, Management." Parallel titles included "Neue Landwirtschaft – Magazin für Agrarmanager" (1990–2012), the energy magazine "Joule – Magazin für Energieprofis" (2006–2017), "DLZ next – das Magazin für die Generation Zukunft" (2009–2016) for young farmers, and "Agrarmanager – Betrieb, Markt, Finanzen" (2013–2017).

The digital chapter began in 2007 with the launch of the agrarheute.com portal, which grew into one of German agriculture's most-used websites. In May 2017, the Deutscher Landwirtschaftsverlag reorganized its supra-regional agricultural brand portfolio: the portal and the magazines DLZ-Agrarmagazin, Agrarmanager and Joule were merged into the single agrarheute media brand. The move consolidated editorial resources behind one digital-first brand while preserving the print magazines' identities within it — a response to the same pressures reshaping all trade publishing: the migration of news consumption online, the demand for multimedia formats, and the need for scale in digital advertising.

Since the merger, agrarheute has expanded its video, community and events activities while maintaining the portal's position at the top of German agricultural media by reach. Industry recognition, including honors from the Deutsche Fachpresse (German trade press association), has marked its standing in professional publishing.

Coverage and Content

The portal's news operation covers the full agenda of German and European agriculture. Agricultural policy — the EU's Common Agricultural Policy, German fertilizer and plant-protection regulation, animal-welfare legislation — is a standing beat, reported with the detail that affected farmers require. Market coverage tracks commodity prices, input costs and market analysis, with regular expert commentary. Crop production content spans varieties, plant protection, tillage and harvest technology; livestock coverage addresses husbandry, feeding, stable technology and animal health.

Machinery journalism is a pillar: practical tests of tractors, combines, forage harvesters and implements, conducted in real working conditions, give readers independent assessments of the machines in which farms invest hundreds of thousands of euros. Farm management content addresses business questions — financing, succession, diversification into direct marketing or renewable energy — reflecting the reality that modern farms are mid-sized enterprises. The "Hofreport" video series visits farms across Germany, portraying entrepreneurial farmers and their operations, while agrarheute-tv's weekly review compresses the week's events into seven minutes of video.

The print magazines provide depth: long-form reports, analyses and features that the daily news cycle cannot accommodate. The CERES AWARD, the brand's farmer-of-the-year recognition, generates its own editorial universe of portraits and best-practice stories. Together, the daily portal, the magazines, video and community form a layered information offering — fast news online, tested advice in print, discussion in the forums, and inspiration in the video formats.

Organization and Ownership

agrarheute is a media brand of the dlv Deutscher Landwirtschaftsverlag GmbH, one of Germany's major agricultural specialist publishers, headquartered in Munich. The dlv was formed in 2001 from the merger of the Bayerischer Landwirtschaftsverlag and the Landbuch-Verlag Hannover, and its portfolio spans agriculture, forestry, food and rural life. Within the group, agrarheute is the flagship brand for the supra-regional agricultural audience, alongside regional farming titles and the forestry journal AFZ-DerWald.

The brand operates as an integrated newsroom producing for portal, magazines, video and social channels. Its commercial model combines digital and print advertising from the agricultural input industry — machinery manufacturers, seed and crop-protection companies, feed producers, financial services — with subscriptions for the print magazines and revenues from events and awards. Audience measurement through the IVW (the German circulation audit bureau) documents the brand's print and digital reach for the advertising market. The editorial team works from the publisher's offices, with correspondents and contributors covering the regions, and the brand's journalists regularly appear as moderators and speakers at industry events — from machinery demonstrations to policy conferences — reinforcing agrarheute's role as a fixture of the agricultural calendar.

Digital Presence

agrarheute.com is among the highest-reach agricultural websites in Germany: audience measurement for April 2026 showed around 7.5 million visits, a top-500 rank among all German websites and the number-one position in its category. The portal is updated continuously with news, market data, test reports and service content, optimized for the mobile devices farmers use in the field and the office alike. A newsletter portfolio delivers headlines and market updates to subscribers' inboxes.

Video is a major channel: the agrarheute YouTube presence carries agrarheute-tv's weekly reviews, Hofreport farm portraits and machinery features, building a video audience alongside the portal's readers. The landlive.de community hosts forums where farmers discuss crops, machinery, policy and farm life — user-generated content that complements the editorial offering and deepens reader loyalty. On social media, agrarheute maintains active profiles distributing news and video to followers. For an agricultural media brand, this digital ecosystem is the core of the business: the portal for daily currency, video for engagement, community for loyalty, and print magazines for depth — together forming the most comprehensive professional information offering in German agriculture.