Club of bologna proceedings

1.2 Guiding appropriate choice and use 
Nowadays, agricultural machinery is essential 
for farm operations, and huge sums are 
invested every year on this kind of production 
equipment. Moreover, the machinery is 
becoming very complex and sophisticated, 
and the same time many new models of 
machinery are being developed. So 
manufacturers offer various models of any 
given type of machine. This being the case, 
choosing appropriate machinery which 
matches farming and crop/soil conditions, 
including economic efficiency, and using the 
machinery efficiently and safely, is a matter of 
the utmost interest not only to farmers but to 
society as a whole. IAM-BRAIN does not 
directly guide or help farmers in choosing 
appropriate machinery, but plays a role by 
providing data about machinery test results 
for this purpose. 
1.3 Supporting development and 
improvement 
From the standpoint of the party supplying the 
machinery, official testing means an 
evaluation conducted by an impartial and 
neutral third party. This makes it possible to 
carry out final checking of a given 
manufacturer's product and compare it with 
products from other manufacturers, as well 
detecting defects and weak points that were 
not identified by the manufacturer himself 
before mass production and sales, thereby 
contributing to better development and 
improvement with less risk. In particular, 
official testing agencies are very helpful not 
only in evaluating the products of small sized 
manufacturers, who have very limited 
facilities and capabilities to adequately test 
their machinery, but also in promoting the 
development and improvement of their 
products. The support provided to those 
manufacturers ultimately results in the 
development of machinery of superior quality, 
and that brings about indirect benefits to 
farmers.