“When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization.” So claimed Daniel Webster, an American politician in a speech in Boston on January 13, 1840, entitled “On the Agriculture in England”. The purpose of tillage was summarised by Godwin in 2018 as to provide a soil environment that enables: The summary also states that before the introduction of herbicides, the most effective method for achieving these objectives was the use of the mouldboard plough, but this could result especially on strong clay soils with a soil tilth (mixture of soil aggregates) that was too coarse for a seedbed and “secondary” tillage practices would be required. These secondary practices consisted of both rigid and spring tines; disc, drag, rotary and reciprocating harrows; rollers and furrow presses. All of which reduced the coarseness of the tilth and the surface roughness. Whilst the mouldboard plough managed the weed population and buried any plant residues prior to the establishment of the new crop, it was the advent of the seed drill by Jethro Tull in 1701 (Tull, 1731), that planted the crop in rows that enabled inter-row hoes to be used to reduce the weed burden in the growing crop. This was critical as work at Rothamsted Experimental Station reported by Russell (1945) stated that “Agricultural crops are far more sensitive to weeds than to tilth”.