Minimum tillage for difficult sugar farms

55YEARS AGOFinding a way to work with your farm’s topography may be the difference between failure and success, as this farmer came to learn.

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It can be a frustrating experience to have a farm in a sugar area, yet find that the topographical features of it make cane growing too difficult an enterprise to be economic. There are many farmers who are facing this type of problem in the new cane growing areas recently opened up for quotas. They can take heart from the successful example of one of the most difficult sugar farms in Natal, GN Waller’s farm’s Katinka, near Umzinto. Through several years of experimentation, Waller has evolved a technique that has converted a problem farm into a highly prosperous sugar cane enterprise. When Waller took over Katinka, it had good soil, but possessed so little level land that it appeared to be a miniature Switzerland, with high hilltops and precipitous slopes to deep valleys. Out of nearly 600 acres [about 242,2ha] it was thought possible to grow no more than 100 acres