Frank Crofts: a pioneer in his field

OBITUARY: Frank Clement Crofts, 1925-2014

FRANK Crofts was a distinguished agricultural scientist and inspiring university teacher whose career achieved huge savings in fuel and water for Australian croppers.

His achievements on the NSW North Coast, the North West and on the Central Tablelands represented breakthroughs for farm soil fertility and crop and pasture productivity.

Born on February 27, 1925, the son of farming parents Arthur and Lila Crofts, he grew up in Blayney, attending the local primary school, then Kinross Wolaroi School in Orange, before serving in Townsville and New Guinea with the Royal Australian Air Force from 1942 as a radar operator.

As a returned serviceman he received a Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scholarship to attend the University of Sydney in 1947, where he met Lucinda Wyndham, a demonstrator in agricultural botany and genetics.

After graduating with a bachelor of science in agriculture with first class honours, he and Lucinda married in 1952.

Between 1951 and 1954 he worked on pasture decline on the Far North Coast as a Department of Agriculture research agronomist on secondment to the University of Sydney, becoming keenly interested in conservation and no-tillage agriculture - at least 20 years ahead of his time.

Together with pasture agronomist Ernest Breakwell and Harold Jenkins, Frank Crofts was largely responsible for developing the practice of sowing legumes into uncultivated pastures to lift grazing productivity - a practice now known as sod-seeding.

This led to the university's patent of a sod-seeder designed with a unique chisel seeding boot, built under licence by Grasslands and widely used as a basis for conservation farming.

Grasslands sold about 500 units in the first production year, 1954.

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Frank Crofts: a pioneer in his field