Tanzanian farmer Mick Dennis, formerly of Birregurra in Victoria’s Western District, said the Bio-Agtive system worked using a small condenser which captured exhaust emissions and placed them back under the soil where they were sequestered.

Together with the international distributor of the product, Canadian Gary Lewis, and Australian Bio-Agtive representative Brad Modra, Mr Dennis held some on-farm trials of the Bio-Agtive system at Birregurra last year.

Mr Lewis, whose company N/C Quest licenses the Bio-Agtive system, said the system had been a success right across the world.

“It’s been used everywhere from Tanzania, Kazakhstan, Britain to Canada, it can be fitted just as easily to small scale tractors or top of the line equipment used in Australia or North America.

Mr Dennis said the trials at Birregurra were being done on corn, barley and pasture crops.

While he said the benefits in Australia would be obvious when the carbon tax comes in, he said the reason the technology had been taken up in Africa was that it also boosted productivity.

The theory behind the technology is that the emissions boost carbon levels in the soil.

The recycled engine emissions fill the soil air spaces with oxidized organic matter (emissions) created by the tractor engine to move the seeder tines through the soil.

Mr Lewis said a complicated biochemical event occurred when carbon levels were boosted which reduced plant’s reliance on synthetic fertiliser.

Mr Modra said Australian farmers could be set up with both the Bio-Agtive technology, including the condenser and the systems to enable them to understand how to boost crop yields using the technology, for $60,000.

“The equipment is custom fitted to your seeding tractor, and then all the data is put onto a computer and is constantly updated.”