Surveys on problems and criticism of the inspection service of sprayers in use in Italy

In spite of the presence of more than 200 workshops and of more than 600 licensed inspectors on the national territory, the activity of inspection of the sprayers in use is still not sufficient to comply with the deadline established by the EU Directive 128/2009/EC, that requires to have all sprayers in use inspected at least once by 26 November 2016 (at present the percentage of sprayers inspected is less than 20%). With the aim to individuate the reasons and the causes of such unsatisfactory situation an ad hoc survey was carried out, submitting a specific questionnaire to all the Regional officials responsible for the management of the inspection of sprayers in use in Italy. On the basis of the results obtained it was observed that the main reasons which negatively affect the sprayer inspection service in Italy at organizational level, there is the poor information of the farmers/sprayer owners not only about the mandatory inspection and the deadlines foreseen by the EU Directive 128/2009/EC but especially concerning the advantages/benefits that can be achieved through the periodical inspection of plant protection equipment in use. At operative level, the difficulties encountered mainly concern the status of the sprayers that are carried to the inspections with special regard to the poor external and internal cleaning of the machines, the lack of the safety devices that should be present on the equipment, and the poor fulfilling of the minimum requirements for the sprayer components that are stated by the reference normative (at present still the EN 13790 Standard). About the economic problems, on the basis of the answers collected in the survey, the costs having a higher incidence for the test stations are represented by the management cost of the site of the test station and by the travel costs that the inspectors have to pay for reaching the farms with the equipment for making the inspections