XTractor Around the World expedition set for SA

By Lloyd Phillips
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In the second stage of the XTractor Around The World expedition, four of the latest generation McCormick tractors will cover 6 000km of South Africa’s toughest terrain in 48 days.

XTractor Around the World expedition set for SA
As part of the XTractor Around the World expedition, four McCormick tractors using BKT tyres will travel 6 000km across South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland in 48 days.
Photo: McCormick/BKT
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The first stage of the expedition was undertaken across Australia last year.

According to a statement by McCormick, the XTractor expedition is a “docu-reality programme”, in which the tractors and their drivers are “participants in a journey to discover our planet”.

The South African stage will start in the Western Cape and the tractors will travel through the Cape Winelands, the Garden Route, the Karoo, the Drakensberg, Lesotho, Uysalong the KwaZulu-Natal coast, through Swaziland, the Mpumalanga Lowveld, and eventually finish in Pretoria.

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During its 50-stage journey across South Africa, the XTractor expedition will stop to take part in humanitarian activities, including establishing an orchard and vegetable garden for a community in Limpopo’s Ephraim Mogale Local Municipality, and building a new soccer pitch for a high school in Gauteng’s Sedibeng West district.

Another highlight of the trip will be a stop at South Africa’s largest agricultural expo, Nampo Harvest Day, to be held in Bothaville in the Free State from 15 to 18 May.

The drivers of the X7 and X8 McCormick tractors are members of Italy’s State Corps for Forestry, Environmental and Agro-food Protection and the 1st Paratroopers Carabinieri Regiment.

The expedition aims to showcase the durability, effectiveness and efficiency of McCormick’s tractors and BKT’s Agrimax IF and Agrimax RT tyres.

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Lloyd Phillips
Lloyd Phillips joined Farmer’s Weekly in January 2003 and is now a Senior Journalist with the publication. He spent most of his childhood on a Zululand sugarcane farm where he learned to speak fluent Zulu. After matriculating in 1993, Lloyd dreamed of working as a nature conservationist. Life’s vagaries, however, had different plans for him and Lloyd ended up sampling various jobs in South African agriculture before becoming a proud member of the Farmer’s Weekly team.

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