International Co-operation in agricultural machinery testing

Results of tests, carried out by unbiased test stations can help farmers to take their decisions when buying agricultural machinery. Since 1997 there has been close co-operation between European test stations for agricultural machinery, beginning with CONAMA (Italy), BLT (Austria), DLG (Germany) and in 1998 FAT (Switzerland). The agreement defines common testing procedures, test reports in two or more languages and the mutual recognition of test results. The main aim of the co-operation is to avoid duplication of work and costs by testing machinery in different countries, to obtain more neutral test results and to make better use of test rigs and test implements by testing only certain machinery at certain test stations.