Jock McNeil

From Loxton, South Australia, grain grower Jock McNeil is pushing the boundaries of dryland cropping to investigate innovative farming techniques and technologies to improve drought resilience. 

As Director and Crop Production Manager of a 16,000-hectare mixed farming enterprise, Jock oversees 13,500 hectares of wheat, barley, rye, vetch, and lentils. The family business also includes a livestock operation with up to 3,500 ewes and a lamb feedlot with a targeted throughput of 35,000-head annually. Its irrigation operations include wine grapes and lucerne hay.

When not in the paddock, Jock is also the founder of McNeil Ag Services – a new venture and collaboration focused on equipment sales, service, and support, born from his passion for mechanical innovation and farming systems.

Jock’s studies will focus on strip-till systems, precision application and automation. He aims to explore how these technologies can offer a one-pass solution to overcome the multi-layered constraints of sandy soils such as non-wetting sands, PH, hard-setting sands, compaction and poor nutrition at-depth. This will build on the legacy of no-till and strategic amelioration. 

Jock wants to understand why growers can’t have the best of both worlds (no-till and strategic amelioration) in a one-pass system and reach new highs in production.

He plans to investigate farming systems in the USA, Germany, Brazil and Western Australia, including collaboration with the Horsch family in Germany on prototype machinery design. 

His goal is to understand how soil, nutrition, sunlight, and plant interactions in strip-till systems can be optimised for broadacre cropping under Australian conditions.

Jock’s Nuffield scholarship is supported by the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC). His research aligns with GRDC’s sandy soils initiative and broader industry goals for cost-effective, low-risk systems that future-proof farming against climate and regulatory pressures. His on-farm trials and proof-of-concept machine offer a strong foundation for scaling innovation.