Cultivation is 90% about repairing compaction

Up to 90% of the energy expended in cultivation for crops goes to repair soil-compaction damage caused by the previous year’s farm machine travel.

It’s one of the consequences of current farming systems. said Professor Simon Black-more, head of engineering at Harper Adams University, the UK’s leading specialist of higher education for the agri-food chain and rural sector.

He told the recent Oxford Farming Conference that machines are getting bigger all the time to justify driver costs, and to keep costs down by increasing work rates.