With the Machine of the Year competition at the Ploughing Championships in mind, I thought I’d go one better and select the contenders for my best machine of the last 50 years.

Back in the 1970s when I was a long-haired lad in flares and cheesecloth shirt, my father bought a new Fiat 780 tractor. You remember them with the very trendy Pininfarina-designed cab and a Starsky and Hutch white stripe?

Well, the new Fiat was an eye-opener as we were reared on Fords.

Gone was the crash gearbox and deafening Ford biscuit-tin cab with that wretched button under the seat to work the hydraulics. In came a slick, synchromesh, quiet tractor, even with a radio – perfect for Radio Luxembourg. We didn’t know ourselves and it was so cool that you didn’t even need to be in Macra to find a young one.

They were queuing up for a spin in this stylish Italian.

Furthermore, it could pull more than the birds. With 18.4/34 Kleber tyres and wheel weights, the traction was amazing. So it’s definitely a memorable and worthy contender.

The next contender for this award is the 1985 Fendt 611.

This classy German tractor was Angela Merkel on steroids. A supreme leader which was light years ahead of the competition. Reliability came as standard and it had a higher secondhand value than the Book of Kells. A true, hand-built Fendt, unlike the modern ones, and I wish I still had her today.

Next contender – in chronological order – is another German, the Accord drill, but more precisely the Accord metering unit.

The pneumatic seed metering unit was a masterpiece of design and most modern-day seed drills use this system. In accuracy terms, it was massively superior to the Massey 30 drill it succeeded.

The Accord was accurate to within 5kg/ha whereas with the Massey you either had 10 bags of seed left over or were 10 bags short and that was on a 20 acre field.

Furthermore, the Accord is very easy to calibrate and to fill or empty. If you’ve always had a box drill, put a drill with an Accord pneumatic system on your bucket list.

And now we arrive at the 1990 Case Axial Flow.

Moving as I did from a cab-less Fahr and a New Holland 1540S combine to a US-built Case International 1660 was like moving from a clapped-out yellow VW Beetle to a new flame-red V8 Ford Mustang.

It would have taken five of the Fahr combines to equal the output of the Case. Again, another true pioneering machine on whose concept all modern-day rotary combines are based.

It took me until the year 2000 to discover my next contender. I’d had to endure a Vicon, two Rauchs and one Amazone before I bought a weighing Bogballe EXW fertiliser spreader.

It’s been a revolution in terms of accuracy of spread rate. I’m on my second one now.

Finally, last but by no means least, is the British-built Bateman. I’d wanted a self-propelled sprayer since I was in the long hair and flares. In 2005 it replaced a tractor with three attachments – a sprayer, spreader and slug pelleter. It offers low ground pressure and high crop clearance.

All too often in life the reality doesn’t live up to the dream – but the beloved Bateman can do no wrong.

However, the winner of the prestigious accolade, Machine of the last 50 Years, is not the Bateman but actually the Accord metering unit.

I’d have preferred to give it to the British machine but I’m fed up of them and their Brexit mess so I’m awarding it to the Germans.