Club of bologna proceedings

Hugo CETRANGOLO 
Argentina 
I think the developing countries must pay atten-
tion to the testing and evaluation of agricultural 
machinery. Because it’s the way to improve the 
quality of the agriculture, and also it’s the way 
to not allow the importing of poor quality ma-
chinery. I want to tell you a story that was told 
to me by the director of the official test labora-
tory in Argentina. There was one tractor which 
was sold as having a 60 hp engine, and when 
they did the test it actually had less than 40 Hp. 
It was a very cheap tractor apparently, but it 
wasn’t really. Because of that I think that testing 
is a way to improve the quality of the agricultu-
ral machinery in the developing countries.
 
Malcolm McKAY
In Australia there’s a quite different view about 
testing and the need for testing. And it differen-
tiates according to industries. We have a very 
defined system for motor vehicles, but nothing 
for agricultural machinery at all. The philo-
sophy of government is that it is a “buyer bewa-
re” requirement, and that’s supported by the 
very strong consumer protection legislation in 
terms of the commercial aspects of competition 
etc. And it’s interesting to see that within Au-
stralia it would be quite illegal to undertake any 
sort of collusion on price. Quite often, organisa-
tions are actually prosecuted for what we call 
“price fixing” in Australia. The other aspect 
that gives protection is the product liability legi-
slation, which is a very strong incentive for ma-
nufacturers of all types to actually make sure 
that their products are true to description. It’s 
interesting that this is not necessarily the view 
held by farmers, because the farmer organisa-
tion - a group of farmers totally owned and sub-
scribed to by farmers - actually undertakes so-
me significant testing activities. However one of 
the limitations of that in years gone by has been 
that the standard of those tests, the professional 
conduct of those tests, has been rather questio-
nable. And nevertheless it’s been received by 
farmers as quite valuable information, albeit 
somewhat flawed from time to time.