Ideally, they believe it should be an Australian Standard under the auspices of Standards Australia.

Les Gason, of A F Gason Pty Ltd, and Peter Sweeney, of Horwood Bagshaw, say the standard should define a testing protocol for tine assemblies with special emphasis on the point from which BOF is measured.

For many years manufacturers have published BOF figures that farmers and their advisers have used to evaluate cultivation equipment and make purchase decisions.

But without a standard to ensure that all manufacturers are using a consistent measurement methodology there are doubts about the validity of such comparisons.

Mr Gason said his company had recently conducted independent testing of a range of tine assemblies to establish a comparison between their own products and those of competitors.

"We found that most were in line with their advertised BOF, or even fractionally over, but three assemblies tested well under," Mr Gason said.

"Two achieved only around 50pc of their claimed BOF while one was a massive 65pc under.

"Imagine the plight of a farmer who bought a machine based on that figure only to find tines continually laying back.

"Without a standard his avenues for redress would be very limited."

Mr Sweeney and Mr Gason said their senior executives had become concerned about what could only be described as the guess work used by some suppliers operating in the Australian machinery market.

Because break out force was such a critical measurement in evaluating cultivation equipment, they had felt it was important to take action.

"Australian farmers should be able to have total confidence in manufacturers’ claims for tine break out force," Mr Sweeney said. "That isn't the case now."