Club of bologna proceedings

Hans Dieter KUTZBACH
Nowadays machine tests are also performed by 
agricultural journals. These tests are very fast, 
they are for the consumers, and they reach a lot 
of the readers of these journals and the farmers. 
So how do you handle this aspect? Is this a 
severe competition for our institutional tests?
 
Francis SEVILA 
I would like to ask the two speakers about the 
cost of these testing approaches. We all know 
that these are expensive services. A lot of people 
are needed to operate expensive equipment, 
instrumentation and so on. If I remember 
correctly, because I once used to work for such 
an institute, the cost is not totally paid by the 
industry who is asking for the tests. And also, if 
I remember correctly, the situation is not the 
same in every country, concerning how much 
the public money is contributed or not. So the 
first question is: what is the situation in Japan? 
Who is paying for the tests? And my second 
question - I don’t put the same question for 
Europe because it would take too much time - 
but in this agreement that you have been 
showing us, what is your strategy to ensure fair 
competition between testing stations? I believe 
that these European testing stations range from 
no cost for the test to full cost for the test. And 
I’m afraid that this is not a sustainable 
situation.
 

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Derek H. SUTTON 
Three hopefully short questions. The first one is 
a factual one. I’d be most interested to know 
what proportion of tests result in a rejection or 
a failure; in other words you don’t award the 
certificate or whatever. And in those cases, can 
they resubmit with a redesigned model of the 
same machine within a certain time? What is the 
procedure on that score? The second question 
concerns the difficulties of standardising test 
procedures. I’m remembering the early days of 
OECD, it was a terrific business to get 
agreement on the standard test procedures for 
tractors. And in their attempts to reach 
agreement on combine test procedures, I don’t 
think they ever reached a common agreement - 
an agreed procedure. And I particularly would 
be interested in the case of soil tillage 
equipment, where if you carry out a test of a soil 
working implement in sandy soils in Denmark, 
and get approval for it, and then work it in very 
heavy soils in southern Italy or something... 
there may be a very different situation for 
durability. And I’d be interested to know how 
much progress is being made on reaching 
agreement on those procedures. The last 
question is - really what is the reaction 
generally of manufacturers to your excellent co-
ordination proposals?