Sydney  - What is it with farmers and their ploughs?

Thirty years of experience shows the superiority of drilling seeds directly into the ground rather than turning over the soil and scattering them along the furrows the plough's discs make.

But many who live on the land seem wedded to their ploughs and are staunchly against what's called "no-tillage" or "conservation farming".

"Some farmers just like ploughing," says an exasperated Bob Martin, head of the Tamworth Agricultural Institute in the town of Tamworth in Australia 's south-east corner. "They can watch the cricket while they're ploughing. They can get away from their wives."

Wheat farmer Colin Weise does not plough on his 513-hectare property near Wagga Wagga. Seeds are drilled into the ground in rows made straight by tractor-mounted global positioning systems. After harvests, the stubble is left in the field rather than burned off.

The benefits of conservation farming are clear. It's cheaper to plant a crop because less fuel is used. Soil erosion is reduced and more moisture is retained in the soil.

Shauna Dewhurst, who works with farmers to promote no-till methods, said the resistance comes from a reluctance to invest in new equipment and a belief that what earlier generations did must be best.

She says it's a bit like fencing: just as you are supposed to judge the quality of a farmer by the quality of his fencing, a field not ploughed is thought by some to be the signature of a lazy farmer. (dpa)