Saskatchewan has 33 million acres of grain. If even one extra bushel of grain could be harvested per acre instead of lost through a combine’s processes, that would benefit producers.
That’s why Joel McDonald, Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute’s program manager for agricultural development services, focused on preventing loss for his presentation at the Carrot River Valley Watershed Association’s Tech in Ag Stewardship Workshop at Melfort’s Kerry Vickar Centre Jan. 25.
“What I like to tell farmers in regards in combine loss is the only thing that’s wrong is to be ignorant and not know what you’re losing,” he said. “There’s no magic number what’s acceptable – that’s for each producer to determine on their own – but it’s important to pay attention and to know what it is.”
Under the right conditions and settings, a combine could lose up to 10 bushels per acre.
That’s why McDonald suggests farmers take the time to examine combine residue, to determine just how much crop they are losing.
The program manager said there’s development in combine technology that will reduce harvesting loss. Right now, there are some features that will automate the process, making it more effective and less subject to human error – saving some bushels that would otherwise be lost. The problem is that technology can’t see ahead and make adjustments if the yield suddenly changes – for now.
“What we’ll see in combine technology is more and more sensors, sensing the crop coming into the combine and the crop going into the grain tank of the combine and residue going out the back, as well as internal stages of that process,” McDonald said. “At first, that’s going to provide more information for the operator and slowly that will transition into machine intelligence making decisions based on those sensors.”
McDonald sees those changes in combine technology appearing in the next five to 15 years. After that, autonomous combines that require no human driver could appear on the market.
“If you look at other industries, the mining industry, it’s already there and so agriculture won’t be far behind.”
Automation on that level could happen slowly, possibly applied to grain carts first before the combine. That technology, though it would require a culture change, would have the potential to increase harvest efficiency while reducing the amount of skilled staff needed.
