About Groocock Soil Improvement Pty Ltd
Roger and Sue Groocock established Groocock Soil Improvement Pty Ltd in January 2009. The company is the only Australian dealer for the Dutch made Farmax Spader.
Roger and Sue Groocock have been farming at Bordertown South Australia for over 55 years with 2 years share farming at Karkoo on Eyre Peninsula.
Roger has been a passionate advocate for improving the soil for many years. He has been involved in spading and delving trials in association with a number of organisations including Landcare, Rural Solutions, GRDC Ag Dept, and the Adelaide University. He has spoken at various field days in South Australia as well as Western Australia.
Bringing Farmax Spaders to Australia
In 2007, Roger won a Churchill Fellowship which took him to Europe, UK and America to explore innovative practices to improve soil health and drive sustainable production increases. Roger and Sue were so impressed with the results they imported a spading machine from the Netherlands, the first of its kind in Australia, to use on their property. This was the quickest way to see the spader technology working in Australia.
During the first twelve months of working with the spader in Australia some of the features of the Farmax brand spader attracted them. Due to this in 2008, Roger and Sue travelled back to the Netherlands to meet with the manufacturers and view demonstrations of the Farmax machine. As a result an opportunity was presented to import this spader into Australia and become the Australian distributors.
Since then spaders, which have attracted the interest of soil scientists, researchers and farmers keen to explore their potential, have been taken up in a series of trials and projects supported by Caring for Country Funds, leading farming systems groups, GRDC and state-based research organisations in WA and throughout SA.
Australian Innovation
After using the linkage spader, we asked Farmax to build a wider trailing machine for Australia and they did.
It has proved to be a success, requiring little modification since release in 2011.
One addition in 2021 was the 8 hydraulic tyne rippers in the front of the rotor. This helps to evenly break up the soil to the depth that the spades work. It gives an improved mixing of soil as well as reducing the torque required to drive the rotor and so less maintenance.
This has proved to be a great success.
Building on the success of the trailing 4.5M spader, we have imported the deep model KRG which can mix soil to a depth of 900mm.
Trials on our farm are showing great promise bringing clay up through 500mm of white sand.