HE is known as "No-Till Bill" and his passion for conservation farming is infectious.
Bill Crabtree told farmers at a recent Mallee Sustainable Farming field day in Victoria to do whatever they could to keep their crop stubbles.
"They are worth a lot of money," the Western Australian consultant said.
Credited with encouraging the no-till revolution in Western Australia, Bill was at Kerribee Station, in far southwest NSW, imparting his knowledge to about 50 farmers.
He has spent more than 20 years as an advocate for no-till, also known as minimum tillage and direct drilling.
Bill started out as a Department of Agriculture researcher in 1985, spent a year studying the practice in Canada in 1996 and was later scientific officer for the Australia's first no-till farmer group, the WA No-Till Farmers Association, before starting his own consultancy.
In that time West Australian grain growers have converted from double cultivation before sowing in the 1970s, to 90 per cent of the state's crop now being sown by the no-till method.
At the same time average wheat yields in Western Australia have risen 31 per cent, with growers producing average crops even in drought years.
Bill attributes this, in part, to improved water harvesting and timelier sowing under a no-till system, as well as other gains such as improved soil health.
Stubble retention is the key.
"Stubbles are worth a lot of money in terms of retaining moisture, capturing summer thunderstorms and fixing free nitrogen from the atmosphere," he said.
"No-till does lots of things.
"It fixes free nitrogen, reduces evaporation, encourages water to run into the furrow to get the crop established and it gives better weed control.
"Over the years I've written about the cost of no-till.
"You can play with numbers, but the proof is in the pudding - 90 per cent of WA farmers are doing it.
"It's almost a no-brainer because it's absolutely worth it, otherwise people wouldn't be rushing to it as they have been, particularly in drought."
Bill said no-till wasn't infallible, but through trial and error growers and researchers had worked out the best ways to do it.
"We know all that now," he said.
"It's time of sowing, the right variety, not overdoing the fertility, controlling disease and getting the nutrition right.
"It's a very different platform for farming."
Bill said 10 hands went up when he asked how many in the group at Kerribee had used no-till for at least three years.
"Then I asked 'would you ever want to go back to tillage?' and there was silence," he said.
"You wouldn't want to, there are so many advantages to the system."
He said the main barrier to converting to no-till was livestock.
The sheep ate the stubbles so there was no food to feed the micro-organisms, which triggered nutrient recycling. Bill said one of the biggest croppers in the Mildura area told him that he was making so much money out of no-till and stubble retention that he couldn't understand why other growers weren't doing it.
Also a staunch supporter of genetically modified crops, Bill said the West Australian Government's GM ban had cost the state's farmers an estimated $170 million a year since 2004.
He spent most of August leading a study tour of South America looking at no-till and GM issues, which he said had become popular and profitable.
"Farmers are very excited about (GM) technology and they've got 100 per cent adoption in Argentina where they grow mostly soybeans, wheat and some corn," he said.
