ISOprocedures, the global standard
In an increasingly global market, shared standards are crucial for industrial activities. ISO is a global manager of regulatory harmonization, and FederUnacoma hosted several meetings of the organization dedicated to crop protection machines in recent months
In September, for the first time in Italy, FederUnacoma’s Bologna branch hosted a series of ISO (International Organization for Standardization) meetings devoted to the identification and sharing of common detailed rules for the safe and effective use of crop protection machines (ISO/TC 23/SC6).
Based in Geneva, ISO (derived from the Greek Isos, meaning “same”) is the world’s most important organization for defining technical standards. Active since 1946, its members are the most important standards organizations from 162 countries, and has developed thousands international standards that provide world-wide specifications for products, services and systems, in order to ensure quality, safety, efficiency and facilitate international trade. The standards cover every production sector, from food safety to agriculture, from healthcare to technology. The Italian
member of the organization is UNI (Italian National Unification Organization), a non-profit private association recognized in Italy and the EU, which has been developing and publishing voluntary technical standards for almost all industrial, commercial and service sectors for almost a hundred years. In the specific field of machinery and equipment used in agriculture, gardening and forestry, UNI has been delegated the task to its member body CUNA (Automotive Unification Technical Committee), of which FederUnacoma is an associate member and a point of reference for dealing with various subjects. The meetings in Bologna last September covered eight different working groups specializing in the study of specific regulations for the different aspects of the crop protection sector. The discussions were centred on: defining the dimensional parameters of sprayed drops, to enable more effective treatments and reduce drift phenomena (WG 13);
discussing the technical issues related to the correct shaking of the mixture
inside the machine tank (WG 18); identifying a common terminology of the various components (WG 19); evaluating the air distribution technologies (WG 20). Furthermore: revising the ISO 4254-6 standard that defines the operator safety features for sprayers (WG 22); identifying the colour coding of the nozzles, the terminal components in the irrigation circuit creating drops that are adequate to reach the target optimally (WG 23); the optimum transfer systems for the pesticide from the container to the machine tank, to avoid leakage and contact with the operator during the task (WG 24); drones for spreading pesticides (WG UAV). The meeting was concluded by a plenary session of all participants (representatives of 24 ISO member countries and 13 observer countries). Italy is one of the most important equipment manufacturing countries in the field covered by the sessions, and the schedule of the various days also included technical visits to FederUnacoma member companies, manufacturers of crop protection machines and accessories. The first visit was to BGroup in Imola, a manufacturer of agricultural machinery and equipment that produces weeding bars under the Bargam brand in the Bologna factory. The second was to Annovi Reverberi in Modena, specializing in the construction of membrane pumps for agriculture and piston pumps for industrial washing. Finally, the third was in the Emilian province of Rubiera, visiting Arag, a world producer of spraying and weeding machine accessories.
