Soil and Tillage Research: Why still focus on soil compaction?

After attending the 21st Triennial ISTRO Conference in 2018, one of the authors of this letter commented that soil compaction was probably the most common topic aired at the conference. Indeed, soil compaction was mentioned in about 15% of paper and poster titles, with only a small percentage of those addressing issues for its amelioration. Less than 1% of the papers presented at ISTRO 2018 focused on avoiding the problem (e.g., controlling field traffic). ISTRO 2018 is not alone in showing a relative paucity of compaction prevention papers: a very rudimentary Web of Science search shows that publications on the effects of soil compaction outnumber those on controlled traffic by about 13:1 since 1945, and 11:1 in the past five years.