Trailblazing with no-till

"There was a bit of time there where I thought I might want to pursue engineering instead, but after school I was lucky enough to go to NSW with a guy to repair a lot of machinery, and while I was there he said that I could do both," he said.

"I went to Adelaide and learnt to weld, and then returned to the farm in 1954."

The farm, Pinevale, was located north-east of Lameroo, comprising 1900 hectares of continuous cropping rotation of wheat, triticale, barley and lupins.

Mr Maynard's knack for engineering led to him being innovative with cultivators and seeders during the 1970s and 1980s, including assisting in the making of the John Shearer Wideseeder.

"Back then, seeding combines were less than four metres wide, we wanted to expand and sow more ground, so we modified the seeders to put multiple boxes right across the machine to make filling easier," he said.

The bulky nature of the wideseeder meant it was soon surpassed by the airseeder, which Mr Maynard said dramatically changed the concept of seeding.

"Seeders have improved over time, these days some are nearly 25m wide," he said.

Mr Maynard has also been instrumental in his work developing the joint no-till and cropping rotation method.

"I approached the Department of Ag in the mid 1970s to set up some no-till trials because we were having big problems with soil erosion back then," he said.

"The department said they didn't have enough money to do a big trial, so I said I'd do the work if they monitored it, and that's what happened."

The trial ran from 1978-85, and Mr Maynard said the rotations ended up being a necessity to ensure the success of the no-till method.

"Rotations had to be right before no-till worked successfully," he said. 

If legumes were sown, different chemicals were used to kill different weeds to when a cereal was sown, so everything started to fit together and no-till took off.

"There were places in WA which were trying no-till, but Lameroo was where we started no-till and rotations together."

Rather than a yield advantage, Mr Maynard says no-till has other benefits.

"A lot of people say no-till is the 'ants pants', I don't think it has increased yields, it has just let us handle problems better," he said.

"It's fixed the soil erosion problem and lets us get our crops in quicker, so it's more of an indirect improvement."

Mr Maynard now lives in the Lameroo township, but visits Pinevale every morning.

"My son Peter now runs the farm, but I'll always be interested in what's going on there," he said. 

Lameroo farmer Fred Maynard has been announced as the 2019 winner of Mallee Sustainable Farming's David Roget Award for Excellence, recognising his outstanding work in dryland farming production systems.

Mr Maynard said while he was honoured to have received the award, he was slightly embarrassed.

"I don't feel like I've done anything major in farming for the past five or six years," he said.

"I've done a bit of messing around on-farm but I'm now semi-retired."

The award recognised Mr Maynard's groundbreaking work in developing farm machinery, and his trials combining cropping rotations and no-till in the 1970s and '80s.

The award adds to a list of other accolades Mr Maynard has received, including the Murray Mallee Conservation Farmer of the Year award in 1987, and the inaugural Agricultural Bureau Services to Primary Production award in 1979.

Mr Maynard said innovation was a necessity for progress.

"If there's a problem, you have to try and fix it, don't just put up with it," he said.

"There are new varieties and methods all the time, you just have to be prepared to try them."

Moving forward, Mr Maynard believes herbicide resistance is the biggest problem facing agriculture.

"We need to try new methods to deal with weeds, possibly burning using a zapping method," he said.