Combine harvesting technology has come a long way from the early days of the trailed machines to the close to autonomous machines that can be seen in the fields today.

In the case of straw walker machines, the underlying principle hasn’t changed but the reliability and precision has come on leaps and bounds. This can be seen with the use of crop flow meters constantly adjusting the setting on the machine to get optimal output from the modern machines whereas in the past the setting of a machine was set at the start of the day’s cutting and often not looked at or changed unless a crop change was occurring.

From the late 70s onwards, the practice of having to change internal parts of the machine such as the sieves became a thing of the past as the sieves could be altered to account for the different crop. In the very latest machines, all of these changes can be made from a touchscreen in the cab with no need for scraped knuckles or greasy elbows.

On the move, the modern machines are constantly collecting information from the yield of the crop to the moisture level, which is a big step-up from the visual check of the flow of grain into the tank behind the driver, guess work and the bite test to check the moisture content.

The header size of the modern machine has moved up to at least 40ft in some parts of the world, but is rarely larger than 30ft in Ireland. With this size of a header, technology is now being used to steer the machines along the crop. Sensors on the outsides of the header “see” the uncut crop edge and guide the combine as close as possible to the edge to maximise the cutting width being used. This is a good saving as judging the edge correctly from the driver’s seat at the same time as watching the crop entering a 30ft+ header is nearly beyond human capability.

All of the information that a modern combine collects can be used for many different purposes from simply telling the operator their hourly work rate on the move, fuel efficiency and crop detail. All this information can now be stored and downloaded so that a review of work practices and settings can be done on a daily basis.

The next stage of this is to use the information to guide the rest of the logistics of harvest, such as organising transport of grain away from the combine to ensure that there is no downtime for either the harvester or the transport system. This data can also be used to streamline all the associated systems right down to the staff and equipment requirements at the drying/storage stage.

Everything can be tailored to the output of the harvester(s )and help the system run as cost effectively and efficiently as possible. All of this technology has moved things on greatly from the point of view of getting through the work and improving efficiency, but it comes at a major cost and massive scale is required to back up the investment involved.