Club of bologna proceedings

Hans-Hasso BERTRAM 
I think that’s right, that the market is changing 
in Europe too, and we have to deal with big ma-
nufacturers. It’s the same in Germany. But at 
the moment they are interested in test results, 
and these manufacturers ask us to have interna-
tional - or European - results which they can 
use in other countries too. In particular, John 
Deere have asked us if it is possible to have re-
sults which can also be used in France. As re-
gards the States - yes to the extent that the ma-
chines are sold in the States. But we have a lot 
of machines that are produced in Europe and 
are merchandised in Europe. Let’s not speak 

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about tractors but about combines, if they are 
built in Europe they remain in Europe. And the 
same is true for mowers and mower-
conditioners and so on.
 
Bernard CHEZE 
A small comment on what was said about the 
fertiliser testing laboratories. It’s certain that 
you have very well established and famous la-
boratories, but I was told that for fertilisers for 
example, different countries do not use the same 
types of fertilisers. That can be a limitation to 
the idea of having just one specialised testing 
centre. If you consider the importance of the 
type of granular etc. on the performance of fer-
tiliser spreading machines, this is part of the li-
mitation of the idea. The idea is good but it may 
meet with some difficulties in certain cases. And 
just to make a historical point - I believe the 
first testing station in the world for agricultural 
machinery was established on the 23 September 
1888 in Paris, France. Actually, I’m just putting 
that out to see if someone says that they started 
first - just to check whether it was really the 
first. I’m not very sure about that. And 
CEMAGREF is going to celebrate this next year 
and I think you will be invited, most of the te-
sting centres, to share this celebration.