Toowoomba engineer Peter Cilento is exporting his innovative agricultural technology to the world which is helping farmers improve their crop yields, efficiency, and profits.  

Mr Cilento established C&C Machining Engineering 35 years ago and specialises in modifying the wheel spacing of tractors and other farm machinery for controlled traffic farming.

“The latest crop of farmers, they run their farms as businesses and they are acutely aware of the science and keep abreast of what’s going on,” Mr Cilento said. 

Toowoomba region’s agriculture is a highly productive industry, generating $754 million in 2019.  

Mr Cilento employs 15 people at his family-run business, which this year sent their Widetract products overseas. 

Member for Toowoomba South David Janetzki MP noted Mr Cilento’s innovative products had been purchased by farmers in the USA and France. 

“This is a shining example of another local business, backing local people, exporting our innovation to the world,” Mr Janetzki said.

“Agriculture is central to our region’s continuing development and there are many exciting global opportunities for our brightest local minds to pursue in the future,” he said. 

Controlled traffic farming is a system where all cropping machinery is restricted to permanent wheel tracks.

Mr Cilento’s Widetract products consist of three-to-four metre wheel spacers and extension kits for tractors, harvesters, pickers and strippers. 

These widen the tractor’s front wheels to bring them in line with its rear wheels.

“Soil compaction is the biggest killer for dry land cropping places like the Darling Downs,” Mr Cilento said.

“The beauty of controlled traffic farming is that you’re allowing the ground to be free of compaction except on the tracks that you drive,” he said.

“On big farms, you can actually see tracks in the crop where you drove machinery years before. Those plants aren’t as developed, like a shadow.”

C&C was first consulted in the early 1990s about modifying tractors for controlled traffic farming after the idea of localising compaction was developed at the Dalby Agricultural College in the 1970s. 

Mr Cilento’s wife Mary manages the business’s financials while their son Ran is the sales manager.