Club of bologna proceedings

 
Lothar FISCHER 
Germany 
We have been discussing various systems, but 
we are neglecting the importance of changing 
the mind of the customer - we are failing to 
demonstrate the value of these systems to the 
customer. We are always supplying bits and 
pieces of improvements, but does the 
customer understand what these are worth to 
him? This is very difficult, and if we really 
want to change we have to start at the end 
rather than at the front. We are designing 
new machines, thinking about new processes 
and it was mentioned that we have to think 
about systems - that’s what we have to 
explain, and I think that aspect is missing 
from the discussion here. 
 
Hermann AUERNHAMMER 
Germany 
From the presentations this morning I had the 
impression that they dealt mainly with cereal 
crop rotations. I think we have to look also to 
crop rotation with root crops like potatoes 
and sugar beet. And if you think of our 
experience this fall when we had a lot of 
rainfall during this time, we have a lot of soil 
compaction, and soil compaction can 
influence very very dramatically the 
cultivation systems. So my question, especially 
to Mr. Chairman and to Prof. Heege is: “Will 
we need in the future two different soil 

---

 
88
cultivation systems - one for cereal crop 
rotations and another one for root crop 
rotation systems?”. 
 
Hermann HEEGE 
I visited the EIMA show yesterday, and in 
Italy you can see two different kinds of 
ploughs. The one plough for deep ploughing 
and the other plough for shallow ploughing. 
And when I asked: Why are you doing this? I 
got this answer: One for root crops, the other 
one not. But if you do away with ploughing 
you will have other possibilities with widely 
spaced crops, and root crops are widely 
spaced crops. With widely spaced crops one 
could use residue cleaners, and they already 
are being used in some parts of the world, 
some are used in the USA, and you can see 
them also with European machines. And they 
work quite well when you have wide row 
spacing. Up to now they do not work with 
grain at all. And many grain producers in 
Europe try to have the row spacing as small 
as possible to increase yield, so this wouldn’t 
be a solution.