Club of bologna proceedings

Uri M. PEIPER 
Since I have no more speakers on the list I will 
take a few minutes and give my comments on the 
problem of testing. In my experience of testing 
agricultural machinery, it was usually very easy 
for us to carry out tests on any machine for 
which there was a known and acceptable stan-
dard. Of course the OECD standards are accep-
ted world-wide, and any machine which had an 
OECD test code was tested according to the 
OECD test code. Only the problem was that not 
many machines had these types of test codes, so 
in many cases we either had to devise our own 
test procedures or try to follow in the footsteps 
of DLG or other institutes and adapt their pro-
cedures to our needs. In my country - Israel - 
testing actually started before the state itself 
was born, and therefore there was no national 
test, this came much later. At the beginning fo-
reign currency reserves were limited, and con-
sequently the state imposed quite a lot of restric-
tions on which machines could be imported. And 
that gave a lot of strength to the machinery te-
sting laboratory, because we had to determine 
which machine was better for the local market. 
This is no longer the case - fortunately the eco-
nomic situation has improved quite a lot and we 
are now in competition. Now the tests are 
mostly voluntary, although not all of them - and 
there are still some cases where the government 
subsidises certain agricultural activities, like 
investments in greenhouses in certain areas. So 
we still have compulsory testing of some types of 
equipment, which then go as certified into a cer-
tain list, and when farmers buy this type of e-
quipment they get some help from the gover-
nment in their investment. The length of the time 
taken by an agricultural machinery test is a big 
problem. Computer technology, automation and 
all the new facilities for testing should make it 
shorter, and we too can test several combines in 
one day. But having so many different types of 
weather and soil conditions, field performance 
tests have to be carried out in various places 
around the country. So it does take time. And 
the industry, or the dealers, are unwilling to pay 
for some of the tests. They don’t like it so much. 
So there is always a conflict - which actually is 
good because this is what makes things go for-
ward and develop into better conditions in the 

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future. The standards - the national or interna-
tional standardisation - on one side, and the 
manufacturer on the other, who of course knows 
the standard because the standard is usually de-
fined in concert with industry or is accepted by 
the industry, brings us back to the student and 
professor question. Does the industry go along 
with the test code, and how far does the test co-
de really cover all situations? This is probably 
the reason why there are so few internationally 
known test codes. Because a tractor will pro-
bably react in the same way in many places, 
whereas a plough will react quite differently. I 
can assure you that fields which are ploughed in 
our country would never be ploughed anywhere 
else, because we have such a shortage of land. 
So we do stress the machines and the ploughs 
very very much. These are, more or less in 
short, my comments on testing, and I would like 
to take this opportunity to draw your attention 
to Agritech 99 agricultural technical exhibition 
in Israel, which is going to be held in September 
1999, and I invite you all to be our guests there.