With his business partner, Ray Eustace, they harvest on average, 2,000ha of poppies between January and March each year.

“We’ve only got a small window of time to harvest the seeds, so our gear has to be ready to go when the time is right,” John said.

The poppy seeds are housed in a green pod which contains an ovary that produces opium containing more than 50 types of alkaloids, including codeine and morphine.

The challenge is to harvest the crop within a 10-12 day ‘window’ because a delayed harvest risks the alkaloids being diluted with the water absorbed by the plant.

The Tasmanian poppy crop is mechanically harvested as ‘straw’, using tractors rather than headers.

“I have three Case IH CVX 170 tractors and each is fitted with an 18-foot stripper and a 2.5 tonne bin to collect the harvested poppy plant,” Mr Holmes said.

“Due to the nature of equipment attached to the three-point linkage, we operate the tractor in reverse, as it means we are looking directly out over the attachments and this enhances our visibility significantly,” he said.

The CVX tractor has two sets of controls – both at the rear and the front.

To operate in reverse, Mr Holmes simply swings his chair around to harvest with ease.

Before switching to the CVX range of tractors, Mr Holmes was forced to modify his tractors to enable them to operate in reverse.

“So even though a reversible option may be more expensive upfront, in the long run it saves us a hell of a lot of time in modifying equipment,” he said.

* Extract from 10-page Farm Machinery Feature in all Rural Press farm newspapers, May 22.