KEY POINTS:
A kiwifruit grower lay dead for four days without being found after being crushed by his tractor in an orchard accident.
John Marshall, 53, who captured national attention by inventing a machine to remove backache from many orchard tasks, was discovered on Saturday pinned under the tractor near Te Puke.
Mr Marshall appeared to have been spraying gorse on his Te Matai Rd property when the tractor rolled, crushing and killing him instantly, police said.
The death comes amid a high-profile television campaign highlighting the dangers of working in rural environments.
Senior Sergeant Glenn Saunders said Mr Marshall was last seen alive on Tuesday morning and it was believed the accident happened later that day.
Occupational Safety and Health inspectors are investigating the accident and police have referred the death to the coroner.
Mr Marshall lived alone on his property. He won a merit award at the 2004 National Agricultural Fieldays at Mystery Creek for his prototype kiwifruit marshalling machine. It had been further refined to a Mark 2 version and he was designing the Mark 3 version when he died.
Mr Marshall, who had grown kiwifruit since 1978, told the Bay of Plenty Times in 2004 that it was hard for young people entering the industry to cope with working conditions.
Instead of working upright on the laborious and often lonely task of thinning flower buds and non-exportable fruitlets, he designed a motorised vehicle that was low enough to fit under pergolas.
He said the machine also romped through summer pruning and fruit thinning. It offered up to five thinners a comfortable seated position to carry out their tasks, making work more fun, as well as being faster and more thorough.
Four workers completed in seven days tasks that took more staff three weeks to do standing up.
"My staff enjoy the social atmosphere, being able to sit next to a group of people while working," he said at the time. "At smoko time, they stop the motor, get up and stretch their legs."
Attached to the frame was a remote-controlled stereo that played the workers' choices of CD.
He also invented a wire spinner that coped with six coils instead of the usual one.
Mr Marshall, previously married, was brought up in Te Puke. Apart from shearing merino sheep for 11 seasons in Western Australia, he lived most of his life in the area.
He told the Bay of Plenty Times in 2004 that a love of making things - and the use of his father's welding machine when he was a boy - had allowed him to develop a large amount of orchard equipment.
Mr Marshall spoke of his gratitude to his teachers. "Anything I build that is successful makes me grateful to the teachers I had at school who gave me confidence."
- BAY OF PLENTY TIMES
