Club of bologna proceedings

Derek H. SUTTON 
U.K. 
Can I just draw your attention back to the 
developing countries situation, which Prof. 
Singh mentioned earlier on, and to Prof. 
McKay’s talk about controlled traffic systems. 
The developing country situation on farm 
tillage is, for the foreseeable future of many 
many people, going to be animal power, and 
animal power has compaction and similar 
problems of course. Just to refer to some 
work that was done both in India, and in the 
international livestock centre in Ethiopia, on 
improved systems with animal traction, and 
on the potential for developing those sort of 
techniques in order to get some of the 
developing country farms onto the road to 
better production and better utilisation and 
better soil condition. And it just seems to me 
that we do tend to forget the fact that we’re 
using a plough which was developed many 
centuries ago. Many farmers in the 
developing countries are still using the 
wooden share, with very very minor 
modifications, perhaps a steel tip, but we do 
need to try and draw them more quickly into 
the higher levels of technology to improve 
productivity. And as Prof. Sevila indicated, 
you can’t just transfer systems without very 
careful adaptation and modification. 
 
El Hassan BOURARACH 
Morocco 
I would just like to tell Mr. Sevila that there is 
a matter developed in States, called case 
studies, where the farmer has been involved 
in the research. A second one is the work 
done in Montpelier, where there is a team 
working more on plots than on the field. 
Every square metre can be considered as an 
experiment in itself, because the soil is 
changing and we have made some 
experiments in Morocco, and every time we 
have to take all the measurements in a plot of 
one square metre. You cannot take them in 
the whole field. And it gives more information 
to us.