New EU rules give bad vibes to owners of older tractors

Thursday, January 2, 2014

European legislation sets out next year to ensure a smoother ride during cultivations or transport work with trailers. Will this mean the end of the road for trusty old technology?

by NORMAN DUNN

Every year in Europe, another nail is hammered into the coffin of small family farms, say supporters of this sector. Certainly, life is being made more difficult for them here by measures such as surcharges on milk transport costs for smaller herds or flat rate veterinary contracts. Mostly, though, such changes have been gradual.  

It's the sudden presence of new pressures from the European Union (EU) that really gets farmers going – pressures like the Control of Vibrations at Work Regulations 2005. This slams a limit on vibrations to which machinery operators may be subjected. The rest of European industry has already had to cope with these (admittedly very important) health and safety restrictions for years. Farmers and foresters were given a break by the EU legislators. They got an extra eight years to buy tackle and tractors that reduced vibration for operators, with laws to stop bad vibes behind the tractor wheel applying only in 2014. The agricultural engineering industry didn't waste time here, adding more vibration-damping capability through front axle suspension, independent springing for tractor cabs and, naturally, better operator seats.

But here's a catch with the new legislation – and it's one that especially hits the smaller scale farmers because it applies to tractors produced before 2007. New machinery has to comply with existing anti-vibe laws anyway. Whatever its shortcomings, this older technology was certainly built to last. And this means that even the most advanced arable farms nearly always still have a couple of old timers on standby, a scenario even more typical on livestock farms, for carting straw, transporting calves, turning hay and silage.

Move along to the smaller units, though, and often you'll not find a single tractor less than 10 years old. For instance on the typical Scottish croft (17,700 units in that country currently, averaging around 12 acres each) more than 90 per cent of the units are worked with tractors built before 2007, and many are much, much older.

With the deadline for low-vibration technology creeping ever-nearer, there's been no shortage of the usual "experts" predictably floating over-the-top opinions in the European media. Typical is the view that the regulations next July will limit the working time anyone can spend on an older tractor to "less than one hour a day."

Actually, it's quite hard to get a handle on what comprises harmful vibration levels anyway. The EU legislation bases its measurements on metres per second squared in a formula that considers operator exposure to this "movement" over an eight-hour day. The figure of 1.15 metres (as measured by what is termed an accelerometer) is the given limit for so-called Whole Body Vibration (through soles of feet and seat). Over this, any work with the machinery in question has to be stopped. But even if a figure of 0.5 metres over eight hours is reached, those responsible are required to report the situation and introduce measures to stop any further increase.  

A paper published last year in the Annals of Agricultural and Environmental Medicine is based on a large number of practical tests over a working year on small-scale mixed farms in Poland. These units used their own, sometimes quite elderly, machinery. The results revealed that the new vibration limits were rarely exceeded. Only at harvest time on combines, and with tractors during some spring cultivations, were average vibration values consistently over the future EU limits. Anyone who's experienced long hours of power harrowing from the seat of an elderly tractor at full throttle will remember the feeling. Average seat vibration with a range of combine harvesters in this Polish research recorded a figure of 0.4 metres. The highest reading in this work was for road transport with tractors pulling trailers. Here, seat vibration topped 1.5 metres, apparently well over the European limit as from July next year and definitely a case for, at the very least, a new well-sprung seat. Earlier research in Britain at the Silsoe Research Institute backs up this work: highest vibration was with tractors pulling trailers on the road. In fieldwork, the limits were only exceeded in nine per cent of recordings, at least over an eight-hour day.

The optimistic view is that here's a whole new market in cab suspension and uprated seating for older tractor models. The general consensus in European farming at the moment is that all these faithful old workhorses are not going to be suddenly thrown on the scrapheap. Instead, starting now, the accessories and spare parts industry will be moving into top gear to make sure there's a smoother ride ahead for many an old timer. BF

Norman Dunn writes about European agriculture from Germany.