Club of bologna proceedings

Theodor FRIEDRICH
I think that, with the comments from Australia 
and from Dr. Peiper, we are now touching on 
quite an interesting topic: the question of what 
really needs to be tested and under what condi-
tions. We from FAO are frequently getting in si-
tuations where countries think that everything 
that comes into the country should be tested - 
more or less based on the argument we’ve just 
heard from Argentina, to protect their farmers 
from low quality. On the other side, we believe 
that farmers figure out fairly quickly what a 
machine is like in terms of quality - what the re-
al quality is. Well, some farmers might bite the 
bullet and lose out in the process, but in general 
on a national or global scale, this sort of infor-
mation is spreading fairly quickly, and we belie-
ve that in most of those cases market forces 
could actually sort out the problems of quality 
and durability, especially in a real free market 
with price differentials. But there is certainly a 
connection with the legislation of each country. 
Australia mentioned consumer protection laws, 
and this kind of legislation also makes it much 
easier for the farmer to react in case of real 
fraud, which in other countries might not be co-
vered by the legislation path. But we still believe 
that legislation, and confining mandatory te-
sting or standardisation to the truly essential 
aspects that are not covered by market forces, 
like safety and the environment, is the better 
way to go about it. If then the consumer and the 
manufacturer still feel that they need testing, as 
is the case in Europe - and it is I think a useful 
instrument - then we should go to the sort of 
self-financing testing arrangements where all 
the interested parties really contribute to the 
test and to the quality. Because if we leave the 
testing to government institutions just to protect 
their markets, we find in many countries gover-
nments discover testing is expensive, so in the 
long run we get a lower quality just because the 
governments can’t pay for the testing in the long 
term.
Hermann HEEGE 
I have thought about the relationship between 
testing and the size of the farm machinery in-
dustry. In Europe the farm machinery industry 
consists mainly of medium sized enterprises, 
and also quite a lot of small enterprises. In the 
States it’s big enterprises, huge enterprises 
mainly, and testing is quite common in Europe, 
while testing isn’t done much in the States as far 
as I know. And so I’m thinking whether there is 
a relationship between the size of the machinery 
manufacturers and the existence of testing. And 
I would like to ask Dr. Liberatori or Dr. Ber-
tram whether they see a relationship here.