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Feilding soil scientist and inventor Dr John Baker is on a mission to save the world's soils and has created a special machine that has been described as the "Rolls Royce" of direct drill seed machines.
With a turnover of between $3-4 million a year, Baker's cross-slot no-tillage drills are sold in 18 countries and used extensively in the United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom.
As the earth's soil quality diminishes, Baker's drill has been touted by its designer and enthusiastic supporters as a potential saviour.
Recently researchers from the University of Sheffield found that soils under Britain's allotments were significantly healthier than soils that had been intensively farmed. They said the UK had only 100 harvests left in its soil.
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) predicts the world, on average, has just 60 more years of growing crops left.
Former Agresearch scientist Craig Ross said there were various no-tillage drills but the one Baker has invented - the so-called cross-slot - is a "Rolls Royce" machine because it barely disturbs the soil, leaving the previous harvest's leftover straw in the soil and encouraging worms and micro-organisms.
Baker says New Zealand is not as badly off as other countries because of the use of livestock outdoors, which fertilise soils naturally. However there have been studies to show intensive dairying removes more organic matter from the soil than is replaced, and arable soils have been "markedly" depleted.
Baker said croppers usually burned the previous year's residue vegetation or ploughed it in order to replant. Either way disturbed the soil, leading to carbon loss and loss of micro-organisms.
One of New Zealand's leading wheat growers, David Ward of Ashburton, converted to using the cross-slot drill 10 years ago and has seen organic matter levels climb by up to 50 per cent.
In 1992 the organic matter in his pastures was around 4.5 per cent, and it was only 3 per cent in cropping paddocks.
In 1996 he invested in a cross-slot direct drill. By 2007 organic matter had increased to between 5.6 and 6.1 per cent.
"Increasing soil organic matter makes a farm more resilient. We've improved the soils and improved yields. It's working," Ward said.
Baker said his machine differed from other so-called "no tillage" drills.
"The big mistake is that people thought direct drilling would be the answer to everything but so many direct drills cause so much disturbance of the soil in the process that they might lose three tonnes of organic matter a hectare. We go underneath the residues. If you look at a field afterwards, it's hard to see where we've been," Baker said.
In the case of Ward's farm, if he produces 10-12 tonnes of wheat per ha, he also produces 10-12 tonnes of straw.
"That's organic matter and if you can leave it where it is and it decomposes, that goes back into the soil," Baker says.
For the system to operate effectively, farmers have to use the herbicide Roundup after each harvest.
Baker considers Roundup one of the most benign herbicides because it breaks down very swiftly.
"People can get confused that Monsanto is an evil empire because it led the GM debate and created terminator genes - and to a degree they're right but the one thing they did get right was Roundup. It allows no tillage drilling to work," he says.
The story of how Baker created his drill has as many twists as a thriller.
After 20 years of perfecting the machine, Massey University - for whom he worked - put it on the market in 1986. It was licensed to a US investor but a fraudster tried to take over the new company, and then-chairman Baker was threatened with being "kneecapped".
In the 1990s an Auckland company took over development of the drill, but after a series of calamities Baker finally owned the technology and was able to go into production on his own account.
The 74-year-old has been nominated for the World Food Prize twice for his contributions to improving the quality, quantity or availability of food throughout the world.
The UN General Assembly has declared 2015 as the International Year of Soils.
"The clock is ticking on how many harvests New Zealand has left," Baker said.
