As the saying goes, the best way to fix a problem is not always to reinvent the wheel.
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This rings true for Allansford entrepreneur Pete Singleton who is improving traditions on farms to make work easier and help the environment, including rethinking a decades-old use of tyres on silage mounds.
He and two business partners are behind three inventions sweeping onto south-west Victorian farms and gradually those beyond the region too.
Cost-effective ways of compressing silage mounds - usually needing a few pairs of hands and a day's work to put thousands of old tyres on plastic tarps - haven't spared a second thought in decades.
But Mr Singleton calculates the average silage mound requires farmers to move 12,000 tonnes of tyres, often over a slippery tarp made wet from tyres that hold toxic water.
"This liquid, why it is such a problem, is it goes onto the feed," he said.
His solution is to use a mobile machine to cut the side wall out of tyres to stop them from holding water. He is also investigating how to offer chain-like mats of tyres roped together with bailing twine.
Mr Singleton's business, Singleton Fensing, is working with a NSW-based recycling company to cut and source bigger amounts of tyres.
"Our great idea, very simple, is to reuse the abundant materials already on a farm," Mr Singleton said.
"It's a much safer way, and much cleaner and environmentally friendly."
Farmers in Queensland have to notify authorities when they use tyres for silage and Mr Singleton expects changes in Victoria too.
But that's not the only idea Mr Singleton has quietly worked on at Allansford. Countless hours spent fixing broken gates and building fences were also cause for inspiration.
Mr Singleton said he had invented a new hinge which could withstand the weight of five adults standing on a gate, putting farmers' repeated warning not to stand on gates to rest.
"There has been such demand for the hinge, I sold out of the product within days," Mr Singleton said.
Another design, a wire twitching key for building fences, had similar success after Mr Singleton had 10,000 manufactured in China and has sold all but 900.
"We saw there is a job done that is often inaccurate and time consuming and we thought of a better way," he said.
Mr Singleton's upbringing on a Portland district farm when he remembered pulling out fence posts and putting them back upside down sent him in search of a better way.
"We want to think outside the box," he said.
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