Jethro Tull (agriculturist) the seed so that it could grow. Before the introduction of the seed drill, the common practice was to plant seeds by broadcasting (evenly throwing) them across the ground by hand on the prepared soil and then lightly harrowing the soil to bury the seeds to the correct depth. In his 1731 publication Tull described how the motivation for developing the seed-drill arose from conflict with his servants. He had struggled to enforce his new methods upon them, in part because they resisted the threat to their position as labourers and their skill with the plough. Jethro Tull invented some
Seed drill hopper filled with seeds arranged above a series of tubes that can be set at selected distances from each other to allow optimum growth of the resulting plants. Seeds are spaced out using fluted paddles which rotate using a geared drive from one of the drill's land wheels—seed rate is altered by changing gear ratios. Most modern drills use air to convey seed in plastic tubes from the seed hopper to the coulters—it is an arrangement which allows seed drills to be much wider than the seed hopper—as much as 12 m wide in some cases. The seed is metered