Every time my comments have been ignored. I do remember having a very long and heated discussion with several "scientists" from the Dept of Ag in Canberra 20 or so years ago about the practice. They where convinced that minimum till or no till was the way to go.

Unfortunately, the only thing that happens is soil compaction - no root or moisture penetration is the result. The other side effect is that top soil-making, Part of it is used by the crop and the rest evaporates or it's lost in the wash.

Go Back to heavy tilling, aerate the soil, incorporate manures, straws, cane mulch and the like, reduce the use of chemical fertilisers and you will see your soil come back to life and once again be very productive.

In the long run, it would save many $ in expenditure on reinventing the wheel and waiting for crises before doing anything about it. We may even be able to shut the gate before the horse bolts.

The current economic world crisis is testimony to the science of free enterprise when greed steps in. The current state of world agricultural soils also is testimony to the mainstream agricultural science - we have been mining our soils since we were able to turn the first sod.

Extract from Albrecht says: “When measured in terms of carbon dioxide output, that the soil is a live, active body. An acre of the better corn belt soil in Iowa or northern Illinois, for example, exhales more than 25 times as much of this gas per day as does an adult man at work.

Such a soil area burns carbon at a rate equivalent to 1.6 pounds of a good grade of soft coal per hour. The heat equivalent evolved in the same time would convert more than 17 pounds of water to steam under 100 pounds pressure.

A 40-acre cornfield during the warmer portion of a July day is burning organic matter in the soil with an energy output equivalent to that of a 40-horsepower steam engine.

Every acre, in other words, may be roughly pictured as a factory using the equivalent of 1 horsepower. Organic matter is the source of the power without which the plant-food elements could not be changed to usable forms.

The depletion of the supply of organic matter by cultivation is well illustrated by the report of a study made in central Missouri in which an undisturbed virgin prairie soil was compared to an adjoining field cropped to corn, wheat, and oats for 60 years without the addition of manure or fertiliser.

No erosion had taken place, yet 38pc of the organic matter represented by the virgin soil had been lost during that period because of cultivation. As a consequence of this loss in organic matter, the soil structure was modified to an extent that might be represented by reducing the number of granules that were the size of particles of sand by 11pc and increasing the number that were the size of clay particles by 5.5pc.

The loss of organic matter represents soil compaction, which hampers the circulation of air and water and hinders tillage operations at the same time that the function of the soil in plant nutrition is disturbed.

Thus, in just 60 years, more than one-third of the organic matter, representing centuries of accumulation, was destroyed and the efficiency of the soil for crop production was reduced”.

We have implemented controlled traffic on 3 metre centres with all machinery including the header on permanent wheel tracks.

Compaction has been significantly reduced. Our fuel consumption has dropped by 50pc. Our soils are softer and hold more water. We have harvested a profitable crop in drought years where other farmers nearby that ploughed didn't.

Zero till is all about farming moisture and maintaining stubble cover.

Peter, we all used heavy tillage 20 years ago and it was a failure. It has taken years to reverse the plough pans and hard setting soils that are a result of heavy tillage we did in the 80s.