Mark and Dave Taylor crop around 2000ha at Lockhart NSW, growing wheat, canola, fava beans and lentils. Taylor grains was one of our early adopters, we fitted up their Case IH 7120 with a Seed Terminator in time for the 2016 harvest. Despite a run of bad luck in the maiden year mainly due to factory faulty bearings, they managed to add great value by developing new chute work to spread material through MAV chopper (see tweet below).

We used to windrow burn just on our canola. Windrow burning works really well as a weed control method, but it removes the residues from the paddock and that really goes against the grain for our farming system. The reason we moved to Seed Terminator was really our ability to retain our residues with the associated nutrients and moisture as well as doing something about weeds.

Chaff Lining, Tramlining and Chaff carts are all options, but all the nutrients from the residue are confined in lines or chaff dump sites rather than putting those nutrients back across the whole paddock. Then you have the weeds, which you have put through the header, being put back on the paddock with the residue and you either hope they rot or burn them. I believe Seed Terminator is part of the answer, chemicals do their bit, but we need to ensure their longevity.

Power was much higher than we thought it was going to be and an issue with our smaller 7120, but we still got 400ha done in 2017. We're looking forward to the upgrades coming out this year, 30% less power will certainly be a game changer for our operation.

Our second legends of the month are Mick and Heather Schutz from Grass Patch Western Australia. Mick is the owner of the 'Triplets', three John Deere S680's fitted up with three Seed Terminators. He has been instrumental in our Research & Development program, traveling to Kangaroo Island with our Test Stand to work with Nick on power with Aero-Impact 2.0 in early 2018. We caught up with Mick in June 2018.

Mick, Heather and sons Dylan and Tyson crop 7500 Hectares at Grass Patch WA. They have always planned and farmed for the long term future by setting up CTF (Control Traffic Farming) interrow seeding and making their own chaff decks to maintain stubble and place weed seed on tramlines.

We had taken a keen interest in mechanically devitalising weed seeds at harvest but know the power losses associated with a hydraulic drive from our own design and engineering work. When Seed Terminator evolved we got interested again with the Mechanical Drive and 4 modes of killing weed seeds. We were only going to fit one Seed Terminator, but we saw the new drive on the 2017 models, we bit the bullet and went to three to start the next step into the future of weed seed control. This also allowed us to compare wear and performance against each header. We don't have any major weed seed issues but just wanted to stay in front of control, we believe this is the next step on from chaff decks.

Retaining chaff and stubble is critical organic material to maintain soil health, we have never burnt stubble for weed control!

Using a mechanical method (not cultivation) to control weeds is brilliant. This year we had no mouse problem because they got hungry and died. After one year we had no weed seed germination in relation to chaff spread from headers - very happy one year down.

Power and wear were our two Big Questions after 2017! After being on Kangaroo Island helping Nick with testing this has been address for the 2018 season.

< Nick, Mick and Mark 'the three amigos' at the Kangaroo Island Research & Development Facility in January 2018 working on Aero-IMPACT 2.0 31% reduction in power.

Our first legend of the month is Andrew 'the trail blazer' Todd from Dowerin Western Australia. Andrew and Jacinta run a 100% cropping enterprise on 4200 hectares in the central wheat belt. He was one of the first farmer research partners to get a Seed Terminator fitted up and running in 2016, it was his effort and persistence early on that enabled us to head off many issues before other machines were fitted up. Here is a Q&A we had with Andrew in May 2018

The move to Seed Terminator was the next logical step in a HWSC journey that began with windrow burning for a number of years followed by 9 years of chaff cart. The main reasons being full residue retention and retention of the nutrients in it and reduction in time, energy and risk involved with burning. To me putting mills on the back of the harvester seemed to be the ultimate option in HWSC. It would save us time by not having to do firebreaks and burn dumps, and it would improve our harvest efficiency in that we could get back to harvesting as we pleased rather than managing the logistics of dumping the cart in right spot and doing bigger headland turns so as not to jack knife. They might sound like small gains but if you’ve ever towed a cart will understand the limitations. So we agreed to take on one of the first 11 Seed Terminators.

A reliance on herbicide only as a weed control method has led to herbicide resistance, the very reason for the birth of HWSC measures. Mechanical weed control will aid in increasing the longevity of efficacy of the herbicides which are yet to be affected by the development of resistance.

Herbicides are a critical part of weed control in cropping system and their cost is also a significant part of the total cost of grain production. Generally the older herbicides are cheaper as they are no-longer under patent, new herbicides are few and far between and are often expensive and so we need to protect and prolong the efficacy of those older and cheaper herbicides as a measure to help maintain profitability. Mechanical control is crucial to preserving and protecting the efficacy of herbicides.