FTLComm - Tisdale - September 22, 1999

With only a few crops still awaiting combining agricultural attention turns from this year to preparation for next year. For most of this century farm field work involved tiling the soil on the land left fallow during the summer and by working it up farmers were able to kill off the weeds and improve the coming year's yield. Then when harvest was complete the farmer would work up the fields one more time to kill of the weeds and make things ready for the planting in the spring. These practices were radically altered during the 1980s when continuous cropping became the standard means of farming. Instead of killing the weeds with cultivators or other implements chemicals were used and almost no land was left fallow during the summer as farmers plant everything every year because of the widespread use of fertilizers that can replenish the soil with the nutrients removed with each year's crop.

This tractor is part of Phillips Seed farm's set of equipment and it is seen in these pictures working just West of Tisdale this morning rumbling across the field at nearly twenty miles an hour. The implement flattens the stubble and leaves a layer of mulch on the surface to protect the land from wind and water erosion.

The remarkable speed of this equipment and the huge width of each pass is part of the struggle Canadian farmers have had using technology to further improve their efficiency and productivity. The tractor's enormous size and power allow it to effortlessly sweep across the field and the implement it pulls is carefully designed specifically for this task.

These pictures were all taken using the telephoto lens on a Hitachi VHS 1700A video camera.