Acres & Assets | Harvesting Then vs. Now: The Coming Harvest

The weeks leading up to fall harvest are a time of preparation for farmers and others in the Cornbelt. Farmers are readying their equipment, laying out the logistics for getting it all done, and planning for the next season as they prepare for the sprint that is harvest. Grain elevators, fertilizer dealers, agronomists, and equipment dealers are also putting their operations in order to handle the rush of the next several months. 

The combine is the first focus of farmers when they think about getting ready for harvest.  This large piece of farm equipment is one of the two most important implements on a grain farm with the planter being the other. A combine (or cotton picker where applicable) is also the most expensive machinery investment for a farming operation with total price for the largest combine and two heads reaching over $1 million.  

While growing up on a Midwestern grain farm in the 1970’s and continuing for several decades, our operation normally had two combines.  One might concentrate on corn harvest while having two helped insure one would always be operational if the other broke down.  Breakdowns were very common as belts, chains, and bearings would invariably wear out during harvest.  Plus the combines of that time did not have nearly as much capacity and were lacking horsepower.  

During the 1980’s and 90’s when farm incomes were mostly flat, we ran our combines over more years than is typically the case today for several reasons.  Maintaining profitability meant keeping costs as low as possible which resulted in fewer new equipment purchases and more maintenance and repairs.  Also, the technology and capacity of combines changed much more slowly with the exception of when the rotary style combine was introduced.  The combines of those day were mostly simple enough that we could do most repairs ourselves.  

The result was that we spent days and sometimes weeks before harvest assessing and then replacing what was worn down and needing replacement like cylinder or rotor bars, concaves, augers, belts, and chains.  Once we had the parts, we would pull the combine up to the shop or under a shade tree and crawl around and inside the combine to replace the worn parts.  And always there were skinned knuckles and hands as combines were notorious for having the hardest to reach bolts and parts in which you had to twist and turn in all directions to reach the part. 

No matter how well you assessed each moving part and replaced the worn ones that might give a problem, invariably there would be breakdowns during harvest.  Belts, chains, and bearings might not show up as bad until operated for hours and days.  Therefore, a combine always seemed to breakdown and stop harvest right at the peak of activity.

Times are different today as combines are better built, extremely complex in design, and technologically advanced.  The largest combines and practices of today can harvest more grain in one hour than I could in one day 30 years ago.  With these big combines, farmers can do much of the maintenance and some of the normal repairs, but much of the work now has to be done by the dealer due to the size and complexity of the combine. 

In addition to preparing the most important piece of equipment, the combine, for harvest, farmers are busy getting tractors, trucks, grain carts and other equipment ready to handle the grain and do post-harvest tillage.   

In the past when yields of corn and soybeans were much less than today’s, figuring out the logistics of harvest were not as demanding.  A few gravity wagons or small two ton trucks could haul away the several hundred bushels per hour that the combine could harvest.  Today, a farmer has to line up their own or hired semis to keep ahead of the thousands of bushels per hour that large combines can harvest.  On-farm grain storage systems and grain elevators have to be sized to handle large amounts of grain each day of harvest.  

Finding labor to drive the equipment and trucks is getting harder as the equipment gets larger and the pool of seasonal help diminishes.  Many times it was retired farmers or other local retirees who stepped in to drive the tractor and wagon or truck to help out their neighbor during the all hands on deck harvest period.  This is more difficult today as machinery is bigger and more complex while obtaining truck driver’s licensing is more involved.

For farmers, the period leading up to harvest is a time of satisfaction and anticipation.  Watching the crop mature and assessing how yields will turn out is getting a producer closer to the culmination of all the planning and hard work that has gone into nurturing the best crop possible.  Preparing for harvest and getting everything ready for the upcoming weeks is a good feeling but one with its own anticipations.  What will the weather be when I need to be going full tilt?  Will I have any major equipment breakdowns or will there be holdups at the elevator? Will my yields be as good as I thought?  What will grain prices do?

Stay tuned as the race that is harvest will soon be here.