Club of bologna proceedings

Hermann HEEGE 
Germany 
The best thing would be to adapt precisely to 
the weather, and of course this would really 
require some progress by colleagues from 
another field: meteorology. But if the farmer 
could know what will happen several weeks 
or several months in advance, he could adapt 
to it and still get a good result. I said that the 
plough in the long run will have a hard time, 
because of the progress with herbicides. I 
expect that if we get environmentally safe 
herbicides, and taking this in conjunction with 
what is to be expected from genetic 
engineering - crops resistant to herbicides - 
we will no longer need the plough. However 
there will still be a need for some cultivation 
in order to minimise the effect of the 
harvesting machinery, and Mr. Chamen’s 
concept of using the gantry system - that’s 
very interesting. I would like to hear what is 
the cost of this system.
 
Tim CHAMEN 
U.K. 
Just on that last point - the cost of this 
system: obviously these vehicles are not yet 
fully developed, but if one looks at research 
work we did in the early nineties, trying to 
assess the real cost of gantry tractor systems, 
they were in fact very favourable. We used an 
arable farm model to do this, and costed out 
every single operation on the farm including 
harvesting. And it was very favourable. But I 
would concur with Theodor Friedrich that the 
main issue is to look at what is really 
necessary to establish a crop and maintain its 
growth, and if you’re not doing anything that 
targets that directly, then it’s a wasted 
system. I believe that addressing compaction 
of the soil is going to lead to a much more 
effective and efficient way of doing that than 
having to always, on an annual cycle, undo 
the damage that you’ve done in the previous 
twelve months - which tends to be what’s 
happening at the moment. I’m afraid it’s not 
an easy problem to address, but I think it’s 
something that we have to look at seriously 
and try to develop systems for. And whether 
these are tractor based, gantry tractor based 
or whatever, I think we need to look at what 
is the most effective solution.