Club of bologna proceedings

Malcolm McKAY 
Australia 
I want to make a comment on the controlled 
traffic issue. I think that the issue is one of 
controlling traffic, not necessarily gantries or 
not gantries. Basically, within a width of 
tillage operation you require two wheel 
tracks, whether it’s a tractor with a wide 
implement or a wide tractor with implements 
across the width. And there are at least two 
major practices which are underway in the 
semi-arid conditions in Australia, and which 
give controlled traffic a significant boost 
using conventional equipment. They are of 
course within the row cropping situation over 
permanent beds or semi-permanent beds, 
which give you controlled traffic with the use 
of conventional equipment - tractors and 
tillage equipment. The more recent one results 
from the confluence of GPS technology and 
the ability to track your tractor in subsequent 
tillage operations. So you can very accurately 
go out and do your first pass of the field and 
then track that and reproduce that within a 
tractor situation. Now subsequent to that I 
come to the broad-acre problems of Australia, 
with very large machines, maybe up to 25-30 
m wide, and trailed implements, where the 
implement is actually made to track the 
tractor. So there are now some commercially 
available products with GPS control on the 
tractor, putting the tractor in the same 
position, and actually an active steering 
system on the trailed implement so it actually 
follows accurately the path of the tractor. So 
these are technologies that are now 
commercially available, and which give all 
the benefits of a gantry-type system without 
any of the peculiarities of specialised 
equipment, etc.