Would a lighter, farm-owned version of a Softrak actually solve your rush problem? (Honest question, not a sales pitch)

Hi all — not a farmer myself. I'm part of a small engineering team looking into real problems in agriculture, and soft rush in upland/wet pasture came up as one that seems to have no good answer. Before we spend any more time on it, I want to hear from people who actually deal with it whether the idea holds up, or whether we're missing something obvious.

What we've read so far: rush thrives on the wettest ground, and that's exactly the ground where modern tractors and toppers are too heavy to go without doing damage — especially after a wet summer. On top of that, the second cut you'd want in winter/early spring often clashes with the ground-nesting bird season. And topping alone doesn't seem to fully work because it leaves the cut material lying on the ground, smothering the grass you're trying to bring back, rather than removing it.

We found that low-ground-pressure tracked machines with a cut-and-collect head (e.g. Softrak) can technically do this even on very wet ground. But they seem to be built and priced for conservation contractors managing nature reserves — big machines, hired in with an operator — not for a working farm with a rush problem on 20–100ha of in-bye land.

The idea we're weighing: a smaller, lighter cut-and-collect implement, designed from the ground up around low ground pressure, sized and priced for a single farm to own rather than hire in.

Before we go further I'd genuinely like to know:

1. Does this match your actual experience with rush, or have I got the problem wrong?

2. Is your rush ground currently un-toppable/un-sprayable for parts of the year because of weight or timing? How many weeks of access do you actually get?

3. Have you used or hired a Softrak-type machine, or is that not available/affordable in your area?

4. If a smaller version existed, would you actually buy one, or would hiring a contractor always make more sense at your scale?

5. What's the real failure point right now — access, regrowth, labour, something else entirely?

Blunt answers very welcome, including "this is a solved problem" or "you're solving the wrong thing." Trying to avoid wasting time building something nobody wants.