Abstract
The 23rd congress of CIOSTA (Comite International d'Organisation Scientifique du Travail en Agriculture) was held at Bled, Republic of Slovenia, Yugoslavia from Sep. 13 through Sep. 16 in 1988 with 88 participants from 13 countries (Table 1). The presentations of research results in each topic are shown in Table 2.
Attractive and important points for me among presented lectures are as follows:
1) The important roles of information engineering and electronic devices are actually and hopefully emphasized to prevent the declining tendency of the present agriculture and to reorganize and develop the future agriculture.
2) It was stressed that harmony between natural ecosystems and agricultural development should be indispensable.
3) Tight managment systems of agricu ture in socialistic countries are more or less being ammended toward more liberalized direction.
4) The rate of part-time farmers are rapidly increasing in any coutry. Various means to improve their livelyhood were proposed, e. g. recruiting them in non-agricultural jobs more widely, raise-up of their wages outside of farming, stabilization of their employment conditions, reduction of farm work load of women, mutual supplementation by combining together different types of part-time farms (Table 3), etc..
5) Factor analyses of farm accidents and near accidents are advancing both in research methods and in findings to prevent accidents. Typical examples were presented by Prof. Dr. Hammer from FRG and Dr. Oksanen from Finland.
6) In the closing session, Prof. Dr. Preuschen of FRG, one of the founders of CIOSTA, looked upon the future increase of monotonous jobs in farm work and stressed the necessity of studies in these fields.
On my way of getting to Bled and back, I visited three research institutes in Federal Republic of Germany, Switzerlands and The Netherlands. I could obtain, through intimate discussions, new information chiefly about the effects of vibration on human body and research techniques of monotonous work.
