BILL PETERSON (Narrator)

00:50                    

To start with, I tried something similar when at my first job as a seventeen year old. And I was digging a drain through a pit swamp and we couldn't touch the dried peat with any machine. There was no rotary hoes around. And I found this relic of something like what I've created now. And we repaired it up and run it over this dry peat and it broke it up good enough to use ordinary implements on it.

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01:20                    

That idea stayed with me my all my life. It's over sixty years ago since I had that experience. I went back to Sweden three years ago and I was shocked by the condition of the soil. On our family farm, where I used to walk behind Dad, probably ten, fifteen meters when he was plowing with the horses. I pick up enough earthworms to go fishing for the day.

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01:47                    

On my last visit back there three years ago, I couldn't find one single worm anywhere. That topsoil is very depleted on humus. That is when you get heavy rain, it won't absorb it because it works like a tile, if you like. There's nothing there to absorb it, so it runs off. And when you get hot weather, the ground cracks because there's nothing on the top to keep the moisture in there.

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01:53                    

TOPSOIL RICH IN ORGANIC MATTER IS NOT CHURNED INTO SUBSOIL. THIS PRESERVES CRITICAL MICROORGANISMS, PROMOTES MOISTURE RETENTION AND MINIMISES CRUSTING.

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02:16                   

And I decided, this machine, there is nothing else in existence, at the moment, that does this job. And I decided, we have to make something to improve the soil and protect the worms. And this exactly what this machine does.

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02:35                   

One of the advantages with this machine, you can drive it, operating it at probably up to four times the ground speed you operate a rotary hoe. And it doesn't leave any hard plow bottom, so it absorbs a heck of a lot more rain when it rains. It also leaves the topsoil where it's supposed to be - on top. It's virtually no noise. And because you come work at such ground speed, if you can get out of the paddock in a quarter of the time, that means a heck of a lot less fuel consumption and a lot less air pollution. And these are two of the biggest issues today in the world. On just a small operation, like here, with this machine you'll probably save 75 percent. That equals 75 percent of reduced pollution as well.

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02:36                    

GROUND-DRIVEN DESIGN MEANS FEWER MOVING PARTS, LESS WEAR AND TEAR, REDUCED NOISE LEVELS AND GREATER COST EFFICIENCY.

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03:30                   

It does not require a power take off to operate it. You can make it light enough - and I looked into their rice paddies in the Asian countries - buffalo will pull a machine like this one quite comfortably. This machine you can get a cultivator, they call them duckfeet, you can open the ground up half a meter deep. The machine only works the very top layer where the topsoil is, down to a fine seed bed, the rest of it just absorbs water. And when you get dry years, the paddocks had probably got a month or two months of water stored in the paddocks themselves before you even have to start irrigating.

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04:12                   

UNIQUE SCALLOP EFFECT HELPS REDUCE RUN-OFF AND INCREASE VOLUME OF WATER ABSORBED INTO THE EARTH.

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04:18                   

Especially on sloping country, hilly country, where everything runs off into the valleys. This machine here, because you can work, open the ground up that deep, it's got no hard plow bottom, it just soaks the water up and it just keeps going until it get to the top and start overflowing if you get that much in there. It works like a giant water tank.

 

04:43                   

Well the bloke where we had the demo today, Graham Schreoder [operating tractor], he come down to another farm I was leasing in those days, not long after I built it. And I was just running it, did a demo for him, and he said, "I'll buy that one." He realized the benefit of something that don't destroy the topsoil and the worms.

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05:07                  

EARTHWORMS HELP INCREASE: NUTRIENT CONTENT, SOIL STRUCTURE AND PRODUCTION CAPACITY OF THE LAND.

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05:09  

And he's worked on the research station for twenty years with this sort of operations like he got here today. So, he's a man that knows what he's talking about. And the machine that we demonstrated, they've been bought by another farmer and he just saw the video I showed him of it operating, and he said, "I want one of them."