It kicks off this week with our search, in association with EB Equipment, to identify ‘The Greatest Farming Innovation’

There are many contenders. You might think it’s the three-point linkage or GM technology? Semi-dwarf wheat varieties or the mobile phone? A type of chemical or fertiliser or the internet, perhaps?

We’ve suggested a few - but these are only a few or our ideas. We want to hear what you think the great innovations have been – the things that have revolutionised farming. The innovation class is the first of six categories in this series – others will identify what have been The Greatest Farming Figure, Machine, Decade, View and Cock-up of the last three-quarters of a century.

Get involved, and you could see your views published, plus win a free subscriptions to FW magazine. We’ll be drawing up a shortlist from all your suggestions and then giving you the chance to vote later in the year to pick overall winners in each of the categories.

Don't hold me to this because this is my first thoughts, I put it at a tie at this point between GM, the internet, and the cell phone.  100% of the corn and soybeans on my farm are Roundup ready, and about 80% of the corn is triple stacked.  Gone are the days of the weed disaster.  Also, no more messing around with costly and dangerous insecticide to control rootworms in the corn.  In the pre GM days we might plant with the near certainty we would lose the crop to weeds if conditions weren't perfect come time to spray, and the weeds got over a couple of inches tall.  Now, it doesn't matter if they are 2 feet tall, you can kill them.

With the internet I can check the weather, radar, markets, news, get emails, access worldwide research, and interact with farmers all over the world at the touch of a button.  The information I can get in 15 minutes use to take hours or days to get.  Along that same line the cell phone has made everyone instantly reachable.  From emergencies covering a span of medical to fire to breakdowns, you are always in touch with the rest of the world, if the system stays up.  Local news that use to take several days to circulate around the community now moves in minutes.  Sometimes that is good, sometimes bad, but definitely a big change. 

You've got in quick - I've got some more info to put up which might change your mind!

 I'm glad you mentioned the cell phone - because that is the one that I am arguing for. But that has already vexed one of my colleagues who thinks this thing should be limited to farming innovations only - rather than innovations in general that have transformed farming. Obviously, we are right and he is wrong. he just hasn't realised it yet!

Here is some more info to get the juices flowing. We had a think at the FW offices and came up with these suggestions. But they are only our openers so we'd be keen to hear alternatives - or hear why you think one of these is the winner.

✱ There are many who would say livestock farming and technological innovation aren’t happy bedfellows, but a glance back through the last 75 years highlights just what advances have been made in that time. After all, had you told the average farmer in 1934 that within his or her lifetime most dairy cows would never see a bull, but would be served by artificial insemination, they’d have thought you were slightly insane. But AI had a massive impact on UK dairy farming, allowing exceptional genetics to become available to every farmer. And many beef farmers are also benefiting from AI too.Perhaps as remarkable is robotic milking. In many 1930s herds, milking was still being undertaken by hand – but by 2009 robotic milking, while not being commonplace, is a technology an increasing number of farmers are opting for and benefiting from its management advances. - Jonathan Long

If you want to get more basic, electricity.  Our area wasn't "electrified" until the late 1940s, my father tells how my grandmother stood at the light switch switching it on and off in amazement(think milking machines, refrigeration, electric fence, water pumps, grain auger motors, etc).   I reckon most of the UK got wired before most of rural Kansas, so that might not fall into the 75 year category.  Another basic is herbicide, leaving the GM out of it.  Just the ability to kill a weed and not the crop was pretty earth shattering.  Antibiotics as well, Grandpa told me how amazing it was to see an animal recover from pneumonia using penicillin.  I guess your vaccines would go along with this.  How about cabs on tractors(with AC and heat)?  You think it is rough in the UK, try sweating it out on a hot Kansas summer day at about 105F or better, or feeding cattle at -10 F on a winter morning without a cab.  I think it is going to be really hard to pin point one innovation, there have been so many.

 I would have said the loader as before that everything from cleaning out the sheds to carrying the bales etc had to be done by hand.

Though I did also think 3 point linkage and rubber tyres.

What about the castration ring, used for everything, I even sold them to my mates at primary school, Isabel, behave, (tires for their toy cars).

The innocence of youth!

Can't stand the smell of Swarfega. So won't get my vote on that grounds alone! T'internet is a strong contender though.

i agree with sjk its got to be the loadall (Teleyhandler)as we call it

Ear Muffs when you old man is telling you off !

Most definatly the Greatest Innovation in Agriculture is The Ferguson System simply because of the significant difference it has made to agriculture, and the genius of Harry Ferguson who developed it from scratch, nothing to base it on or adapt, he had a vision of how agriculture had to evolve to make it more efficient and profitable.

The Greatest Farming Figure is no surprise... Harry Ferguson

the round baler is my effort.

i well remember stacking   fields of small bales  in the evening, frequently finishing in the dark.

and also whole fields of straw that didnt get stacked in time, and were ruined.

once the round baler is finished, they can sit there for years.

The Farmers Weekly of course! It just scrapes in at 75 years.

Also I go along with the ferguson system. Although it is much enhanced by electronics, it is still in every day use today - amazing.

And I agree with Glasshouse's round baler.

The Combine harvester? Does it fit within the 75 year slot?

I always tell students who come to the farm that there are three things that revolutionised extensive livestock farming.

The Mobile phone has already been mentioned, this however allowed better and faster communication, but did get rid of people as there was no longer a requirement for someone to make or answer calls at the farm house/office.

The quad bike has enabled one man to cover much larger areas and look after greater numbers, again removing people from the land.

The electric fence has enabled stock to be more easily kept on unfenced land. If ever there was an individual that made a difference in this country it must have been the late Harry Ridley when he invented the Rappa fencing system. Sadly all of these great inventions did take people away from the farms.

The invention of anthelmintics must also rate as one of the most significant advances in the last 75 years. The days of using Nicotine and Copper Sulphate and Arsenic as well as the Organo Chlorines for the control of internal and external parasites are probably best forgotten!

I can remember using Thibenzole as a drench for the first time and the huge benefits that it brought to the sheep and cattle industry.

Round-Up (Glyphosate), The farmer's friend; revolutionised grass weed control and paved the way for continuous high yielding cereal production.

For the dairy industry the "cubicule" inovation must rank as number 1. Without cubicules today's dairy farmer would still be strugling with a wheelbarrow!!

evan thomas

I think semi-dwarf wheat varieties should be getting more love!!

Two others for consideration: 

Inorganic nitrogen fertilisers and triazole fungicides. Both have played a massive part in achieving higher yields on arable farms, but, of course, without semi-dwarf varieties, neither would have had much impact. QED!

Mike Abram - Arable Deputy Editor:

I think semi-dwarf wheat varieties should be getting more love!!

You've just got to accept that you've backed the wrong horse....

I go along with Allyr in this quotation for him. "Also I go along with the ferguson system. Although it is much enhanced by electronics, it is still in every day use today - amazing."

However, how about the parts distribution network which generally means you can get the machines up an running within 24 hours. On the whole I think this beats the 'scrap heap,' although it might be more appear expensive.

I go along with the idea the 'gross margin' in enabling a change in the 'thinking' of farmers, and a further refinement to that thinking, is in the concept of value added, in that to focus only on what it costs, rather than what it earns can retrain creative thought.

I know several have said it already, but the Ferguson System has to be up there at or near the top. 

We could also argue that what we recognise as the conventional tractor, onto which the Ferguson System was mounted, is the greatest farming innovation. Henry Ford could perhaps take the credit for creating the massed produced tractor and thus giving Harry Fergusson somthing to plonk his system onto. Just a thought.

Either way, Henry Ford and Harry Ferguson deserve alot of thanks from us agricultural types!

 Thanks to Heidi Colthup who sent me this suggestion:

Radio 4. It's of huge importance to the farming community - not just with the farming programme but The Archers and the all important Women's Hour - which plenty of farmers listen to as they trail up and down the fields ploughing/drilling/rolling/etc. The radio alone, regardless of station, is a constant companion for those in agriculture - it's the contact with the outside world that is often hard to beat - it's there all hours of the day, seven days a week. The Shipping Forecast provides us with reliable weather forecasts and frames our day almost like a prayer! We get to shout at politicians and cheer on John Humphyrs et al as they take them to task each morning as we do the school run or do the milking. Cows have improved milk yields listening to Radio 3 (I seem to remember reading some research on this years ago) and young farmers plough along to Radio 1.
It may not be the very best invention in farming, but the radio is without doubt our most precious and constant one - in my opinion anyway.