At Agritechnica 2025 last November, Geringhoff joined that list of companies with its camera-based, AI system called Yield EyeQ.

Yield EyeQ scans the ground at the combine header to alert producers if they’re leaving money on the field in terms of grain loss.

“We scan the ground behind the header, and then, with software, we analyze if there’s any ears or any crop left in the field,” said Hendrick Schneider, product manager with Geringhoff.

A number of companies have designed after-market products such as drop pans to measure harvest loss at the rear of the combine, but less attention has been paid at the header.

In 2019, field research by the Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute in Western Canada estimated combine losses for canola averaged nearly three per cent of a growers’ total yield.

Cameras for the Yield EyeQ system are connected to a combine header via a linkage arm.

Once power is routed to the camera, a wi-fi signal connects the camera to a tablet where the software gathers data collected from the harvest floor.

The camera system is set up to take two pictures per second. The number of images it photographs can be adjusted in either directionm depending on operator preference.

Schneider recommended that cameras be mounted at both ends of the header to effectively monitor the ground.

Based on the photographs the cameras take, software in the Yield EyeQ generates graphs to show the extent of harvest loss.

A heat map can also show differences between fields, monitor changes throughout the day or how fields have performed in the past.

At the show, Schneider said that the current system was only set up for harvesting wheat and soybeans.

“Those are the two main crops we have at the moment,” said Schneider.

“Future-wise, we’d like to look into different crops, canola, corn, lentils.”

For now, Yield EyeQ only monitors the ground as it passes over the field.

Schneider said that future improvements to the system could include having an ISOBUS connection so operators could adjust equipment on-the-go to help reduce grain loss.

“Further ahead, we’d like to have communication with the combine,” said Schneider, “so maybe those adjustments can be done automatically from the combine cab.”

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According to a statement from the company, “The BranValt name reflects both the company’s strategic vision and its agricultural roots: ‘Bran’ references Brandon, Manitoba, where the company was founded and continues to operate, while ‘Valt’ draws inspiration from the agricultural heritage rooted in Germany’s countryside, where the founder grew up.”

That name also draws meaning from another source.

“‘Bran’ signifies strength and protection, as the nutrient-rich outer layer of grain, while ‘Valt,’ inspired by the word vault, represents safeguarding every kernel at harvest.”

The company, which produces harvest-related products such as MAD Concaves and the SmartPan drop pan system to measure combine losses, also operates Harvest Academy, providing training to farmers on how to improve combine operating efficiency.

BranValt was originally founded in 2016, under the Bushel Plus name.

“Our business has grown well beyond where we started,” says founder and CEO Marcel Kringe. “What started as a basement hobby is now trusted in 45 different countries worldwide. BranValt reflects who we are today.”

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The Harvest Settings Automation feature, which the brand introduced on previous model year machines, and which optimizes thresher settings, gets an enhancement for 2027. It will now be able to work with lentils, peas, rye, triticale, oats and sunflowers.

“We’re really expanding our automation capabilities,” says Brady Alley, combine marketing manager.

“We have six additional crops that are comparable with our Harvest Settings Automation. “

The Predictive Ground Speed Automation feature that debuted on 2025 models also gets enhancements.

A new update uses enhanced processing power and a trained algorithm to accurately detect green crops within an otherwise-mature stand. Green Crop Detection allows Predictive Ground Speed Automation to adjust the combine’s ground speed in response to a wider range of crop conditions.

“Predictive Ground Speed Automation, those are the cameras that look ahead and also satellite maps, is expanding the performance in different conditions,” says Alley.

“Adding green crop detection is one of the biggest things, detecting wet patches or green stems on wheat and making sure we’re slowing down to be able to process that increased biomass and moisture.”

New half-length concaves now allow for modular installation and better durability and are compatible with model year 2027 X9s. The new cradle also enables factory installation of the remote, from-the-cab, controlled concave and separator grate covers.

RELATED:  Check out John Deere X9 Combines for Sale on AgDealer.com

“With the Tru-Thresh family of concaves, we have what we call a half-length design,” Alley says.

“There’s a new carrier. Instead of a full U-shape, now we have two half sections. That will allow us to be more modular with our setup.

“If you think about getting unthreshed wheat or white caps into my sample, that’s an indication I want to keep that material in the rotor for another revolution. So with remote concave covers, I can close covers on the first, second or both sections of the rotor so I can hold that material in. On the separator grates, we also have covers as well.”

Choices for Tru-Thresh concaves include a high-moisture configuration with an angle bar at the intersection of both rotors and round bars for the rest of the section. There is also a multi-crop with angle bars, large wires and small wires, as well as the standard setup Deere has offered previously.

“The benefit is you can really tailor it to the conditions you’re seeing,” says Alley.

To help with initial setup for attaching headers across the full combine fleet, there is a new initial settings feature, which acts as a starting point to fine-tune the configuration for the crop and field conditions.

X9s also get a bigger 550-bushel grain tank and 35-foot unloading auger.

And for those that want to install a HarvestLab 3000, there is no longer any need to cut a hole in the side of combine. New X9s will get small, removable access panels for quick installation.

“Just take a couple of bolts out and pop those off to put the sensor on and leverage the benefits of HarvestLab 3000,” says Alley.

“We’re calling it HarvestLab-ready. It will be available on all X9s.”

As with so much of Deere’s equipment offerings, the main takeaway for 2027 is that high-end technology keeps getting more sophisticated, making it easier for inexperienced operators to do a first-class job bringing in the harvest.

“The message we want to emphasize, especially with our technology features, is our commitment to getting better over time … expanding the automation capabilities to more crop types and conditions,” says Alley.

The post John Deere introduces updated tech for its combine line appeared first on Grainews.

But Armstrong’s efforts in Arizona on behalf of the 9320 would be wasted. As the very first 9320s started down the assembly line, combine production at White ground to a halt. The company declared bankruptcy. But it still had a very desirable asset: a marketable rotary combine.

How did that combine come to be — and what happened to it?

WHY IT MATTERS: In this article, Scott tells a fascinating story of harvester research and development, much of which took place in secret up here in Canada, showing how even the best ideas could fall victim to quirks of timing and circumstance.

New Holland would be the first to market a rotary combine, the TR70, in 1975 — but all farm machinery brands were working on and/or trying to develop the concept.

After the TR70 debuted, no longer was trying to create a rotary combine just an interesting R&D project for other brands. It became an urgent objective if they were to stay competitive in the harvester marketplace — and the clock was now ticking.

“The whole combine industry changed,” says Doug Voss, a former engineer with White, who worked through that period.

Engineers there had started White’s rotary development project back when the company was known as Cockshutt, long before that brand merged with U.S.-based Oliver and Minneapolis-Moline to form White Farm Equipment in the early 1960s.

“The rotary concept was the brainwave of Don McNeil, who was our chief engineer,” says Herb Hagglund, a former field engineer at White’s Cockshutt facility at Brantford, Ont. “He came from Massey. He and another fellow at Massey — who ended up at International — had tossed the idea around before he came to us at Cockshutt in 1953 or ’54. We started this thing (the rotary development project) in September of 1966.”

Given that IH started a rotary project about the same time, it’s interesting to speculate whether the other engineer from Massey-Harris-Ferguson who went to IH had a hand in that.

The garage band

Once White’s rotary development project was approved, all work on it became top secret — so secret, in fact, the small staff assigned to work on it was moved out of the company’s main engineering facility to a rented workshop. That kept the project as invisible as possible.

“They rented what was originally an Esso service station,” remembers Hagglund. “It had two bays and a bit of an office. We just had the barest of essentials as far as fabrication is concerned. I was in charge of the overall project at that time.”

To help Hagglund, two fabricators and a draftsman were pulled from the main engineering section to make up the team working out of the old service station. A service trailer loaded with tools, used by engineers for field repairs, was hauled up to the garage to give the small crew access to welders and a variety of other essentials.

Although they were essentially working on their own, the team was also getting some R&D support from the Ontario Research Foundation (ORF), which was funded jointly by an industry association and government grants. It helped the small, garage-based research team by doing some testing and development in its lab.

Roy Gullickson, a combine engineer, was recruited away from Massey Ferguson by the ORF to bring expertise in harvester design to its staff. And he was given the job of heading ORF’s efforts on the rotary development project.

“The ORF was involved in a contract with Cockshutt (White) Farm Equipment to take a look the possibilities of having a combine harvester more suited to corn and soybeans, but also suited to cereal grains and oilseeds,” he explains. “That sounded interesting to me.”

To begin evaluating potential rotor designs, long before NH introduced the TR70, Gullickson took a look at the only existing rotary technology on the market at that time, used in stationary corn shellers.

“We bought a small, stationary corn thresher you could drive with the belt pulley of a tractor and you could shovel corn ears into it,” he continues. “The rotor itself was only about six or eight inches in diameter. We did quite a bit of testing on kernel damage and threshing efficiency in a lab that was set up for that purpose in the ORF building.”

Playing by ear

To have corn on hand for testing year-round meant the team members had to leave their workshops, go out into cornfields and hand-pick ears for their stockpile.

“We gathered corn ears in the field,” Gullickson says. “The guys from Cockshutt helped with that and we put the ears into cold storage until we were ready to use them.”

Because he’d contributed so much to the overall project, management at White decided to bring Gullickson into its own fold. He was hired away from the ORF to be a full-time member of the rotary development team.

“Roy worked on the (rotary) concept for about three years before he came to us, and then we moved everything into our own facilities,” Hagglund says. “That became our basic crew: two fabricators, a draftsman, Roy and myself.”

As work continued, accommodations in the old service station were becoming cramped. Development of the rotary moved beyond building and operating stationary test rigs to creating a field-scale prototype.

“We were in touch with Cockshutt all the time and Don McNeil, who was chief engineer and vice-president of engineering at the time,” says Gullickson. “He decided he wanted to do a full-size test rig. We did that at Cockshutt using a conventional harvester. In 1967 we took the cylinder, beater and straw walker out of it.” That prototype became known as the R1.

“We brought up a 535 (combine), which was a production machine,” Hagglund recalls. “We brought it up and stripped it out, took everything out of the inside. All we had left was a frame, drivetrain and engine. We took what Roy came up with, the thresher and separator part, and fabricated it in our shop. We used part of our central engineering facility to make parts.” The new rotary thresher and separation system were then installed into the 535.

But even though the team had to work on the prototype outside of its old service-station workshop, the company still wanted to keep a veil of secrecy over its progress.

“One of the contractors we had to make parts was making the rotor, which was fairly substantial and heavy,” says Hagglund. “He asked us what we were making, and I told him it was a cement mixer.”

To make for a simple installation, the rotor was attached directly to the feeder house. When the header was raised, the rotor tilted in unison with it. The pivot point between the feeder house and rotor was the 535’s existing feeder house mounts. There was no threshing advantage to this arrangement, it just made converting the combine to a rotary thresher a simpler process.

“We tied the corn head to the threshing and separating part,” says Hagglund. “It pivoted on a central pivot. That’s how we got the corn head to move up and down. We took it out into the field in mid-January to do corn.”

“The first rotor was about 24 inches in diameter,” says Gullickson. “It ran from one end of the combine to the other.”

Field goals

By the beginning of January the improvised prototype was ready for its first field trial, after being fitted with a two-row Oliver corn head.

But the team had been working on much more than just moving from a conventional, tangential threshing cylinder to an axial rotary design: the initial R1 prototype also included an entirely new vertical cleaning system. Grain was lifted up inside the combine body and fell through an upward airflow inside a rotating chamber that used centrifugal force to improve cleaning.

“The overall idea was we were trying to make a machine that was cheaper and easier to manufacture, because it had less parts,” Hagglund says. “By going vertical with the cleaning unit, we could harvest uphill, downhill or sidehill without any detriment to the cleaning.”

The method initially used to get material into the rotor was unconventional as well. “We started off with an air fan feeding material from the table to the rotor, but that didn’t work out well,” remembers Gullickson. “But the results doing corn, as I recall, were fairly satisfactory overall. So we decided to do a new combine design with the rotor part of the fixed structure of the combine.”

After the initial work in the field with corn, the engineers decided the second-generation prototype needed to be tested in cereal grains as well. To make the necessary changes to the prototype for that, White rented another, larger building in Brantford, and the small team moved from the old service station to the much bigger accommodations.

“We moved three times in the space of two years,” says Hagglund. “We didn’t allow anybody in unless they definitely had some reason for being there. We tried to keep it as quiet as we could.”

With the changeover to a grain header and the rotor fixed in place so it no longer moved in conjunction with the feeder house, the remodelled prototype, now designated the R1A, was ready for field work by mid-May of 1967. Then the team hit the road to Crystal City, Texas, to start field trials in cereal grains. Oats was the first small grain to be put through it. In 1968 another updated prototype, the R2A, was built on the 535 chassis and field tested.

Once the modified 535 combine had served its purpose as an initial test bed, it was time for a ground-up build to incorporate new and better design elements. Working out of its third rented location, the engineering team created an entirely new combine prototype in 1969. Designated the DE-1, it threshed with a 24-inch diameter rotor, took power from a Chrysler 440, V-8 engine connected to a hydrostatic traction drive and relied on a variable-speed belt to drive the rotor.

“The DE-1 was a totally new concept from the ground up,” says Hagglund. “Everything was built by hand.” By 1970 it was in the field.

The vertical cleaning system was also built into the initial DE-1 prototype, along with the rotary threshing system — but because the vertical cleaning system’s design had so many problems, it was eventually abandoned in favour of a conventional one. “We kept working on it,” says Hagglund. “The big problem with it was to make it adjustable and have it convenient to adjust. Cleaning is a very complicated game.”

Despite the fact the rotary team was making good progress, financial concerns at White necessitated belt-tightening measures that disbanded it in 1971. Both Hagglund and Gullickson left the company as a result. “People went in all different directions,” Hagglund remembers.

Regrouping

About a year later, management at White managed to stabilize the company’s finances and reallocate enough funding to the engineering department to restart the rotary project. But with the original engineers Hagglund and Gullickson gone, replacements had to come from the remaining staff.

Murray Mills was one of those selected to pick up where Hagglund and Gullickson left off. “I was working mostly on the conventional combines at that time,” Mills recalls. “We had the two groups within the combine engineering department, the small group on the rotary, originally, and the full-scale development on the conventional side as well.”

With new hands on the project, the top-secret approach gave way to a more inclusive effort after the restart in the early 1970s. “We started sharing (the work),” says Mills. “The way White’s engineering was at that time was there was an engineer in charge of engines, one in charge of frames and that sort of thing. There would be one engineer in charge of that (rotary) project, but he would have access to engineers in all the other groups.” That meant development of the rotary was now very much the combined efforts of the whole group of engineers.

That group did, however, reap the benefits of the major accomplishments from Hagglund and Gullickson: mainly, how they overcame much of the difficulty encountered in getting tough crop to feed into the rotor properly — a problem that lingered with the other brands’ designs, even after they began commercial production.

The secret to the White design was to add a beater in front of the rotor inlet to accelerate the speed of the crop mat as it came out of the feeder house — a system for which John Deere eventually purchased the patent, Mills says, and continued using a version of it on its combines.

Room for improvements

Once the NH and IH rotary combines hit the market, White’s engineering staff wanted to take a look at those designs, so the company purchased one of the first IH rotary combines and leased a NH to evaluate their performance.

Getting material to feed into the rotor and getting good straw distribution at the back of the combines were two areas where White engineers saw they could improve over those designs. Fortunately, they already knew how to get tough crop to feed in, thanks to Hagglund and Gullickson.

“Probably the two biggest things were the feeding and then the discharge from the rear end to make sure you get even distribution,” says Mills. “We changed the shape of the discharge at the back to get a decent spread of the material.”

The White engineers “developed a computer model and did a lot of work on the design of the rotor,” he says. “They were trying to move material with the rotor rather than with the guide vanes. It was almost like an auger, moving material with the rotor. That was never very satisfactory in a lot of crops. It was when they developed the guide vanes that things really started to look good. The original rotor looked like an auger with threshing elements on it.”

The computer modelling and the evaluations of competitors’ machines provided new insight for refinements to the rotor design.

“When New Holland introduced their rotary, it changed the direction we were going in, substantially,” says Voss. “We were working on an auger-flighting concept for a rotor. NH introduced longitudinal-type elements on the rotor and helical guide vanes.” The team at White realized it had to go in a similar direction as well.

With the final engineering obstacles overcome on the rotor, engineers were getting close to a marketable design — and that pleased White’s management, who saw rotaries as the way of the future. Even though a large, conventional prototype combine with a 60-inch cylinder, the model 9800, was nearly ready for production, management decided to abandon it. The weight of importance had shifted from conventional combine development to rotary.

“The decision was made to go with the rotary rather than a big conventional,” Mills remembers. “That basically stopped all development work on the big conventional under development at the time, because it was thought at that time that (the rotary) was the way things were going to go.”

“The original objective of the (rotary) project was to come up with a high-capacity combine, using technology that was different than what had been in use at that time.” adds Voss. “As a result it was a very demanding and huge project.”

Conventional cleaning

Another of the engineering casualties was the vertical cleaning system pioneered by Hagglund and Gullickson. “They had the idea they could go rotary on everything,” says Mills. “The cleaning system they were using was basically rotary as well. It was a vertical drum that was rotating. They tried to use centrifugal force to separate out the chaff. You could develop it to work well in one crop. The problem was, you couldn’t adjust it to change between crops. Screens on the vertical sections had to be changed. You couldn’t use the same screens in corn and wheat.”

So, the first White rotary combine would have to borrow its cleaning system design from the conventional models.

“There was a lot of energy expended on developing the new cleaning system,” recalls Voss. “We had to stop that when NH came out with the TR70. In hindsight, I think it slowed down the rotary development. It was too large a task for the number of people involved and the size of the department.

The first high-capacity prototype to be built using the modified rotor design combined with a conventional cleaning system was the HC-1. The rotor in the HC-1 was larger than previous prototypes, it grew to 80 cm in diameter and its length was extended. It was also the first prototype to use a rotor incorporating guide vane technology.

After further refinements, the HC-1 prototype morphed into the HC-2, which became the production version of the 9700. There were other HC prototypes as well. The HC-4 would become the smaller-framed 9320.

When all the research work was done and the threshing system design was market-ready, White originally intended to create three different-sized, self-propelled machines. The largest model, the class VI, 9700, would be built with the 80-cm, long-length rotor. A mid-sized, class-V 9400 (which was to get the designation 9520 for production) would get a smaller-diameter rotor the same length as the 9700s. And the 9100 (which would form the basis of the production 9320) was to get a shorter, 70-cm diameter rotor.

“We built two or three 9400s,” says Mills. “They were built experimentally but never put into production. There was nothing significant about it (in performance over the 9320) to give it any advantage. It shared the same body as the 9320. The 9320 was the simplest design. It had the fewest drive assemblies.”

Concluded and rebooted

In 1979 White began rotary combine production in Brantford, starting with the 9700. After some initial “clean-up” refinements, the 9700 was renumbered the 9720 in 1984.

But the financial situation for farm machinery manufacturers had become very difficult by the end of the 1970s. Low commodity prices and declining farm incomes in North America led to a sudden and significant drop in demand for combines.

White was placed in bankruptcy protection in September of 1980 and ceased operations five years later. The very first 9320s were just starting down the assembly line the day production was stopped.

Massey Ferguson purchased the White rotary designs from the bankruptcy receiver, giving it ownership of all the completed 9720s, any incomplete models on the assembly line including the 9320s, the parts stores and all the tooling required to build them.

Production of the 9700s then moved across Brantford to the MF facility. The 9320 Whites eventually made it all the way down the assembly line there wearing MF 8560 decals, while the larger 9700s were rebadged as the MF 8590.

Eleven years after serious engineering work began on creating a rotary combine at White, engineers finally saw their efforts begin to pay off with the model 9700s, which had the largest capacity of any rotary machine on the North American market when they entered production in 1979.

Unfortunately, the company would not last long enough to gain the full benefit of the efforts its engineers put into creating the new machines.

“For its time, the 9700 was a good combine,” Voss says. “It kind of pioneered the high-capacity direction machines have been forced to go in.”

CORRECTION, Jan. 23, 2026: The caption on the photo up top of Murray Mills and Neil Armstrong, as it appeared in the Dec. 31, 2025 print edition of Grainews, incorrectly identified Neil Armstrong as engineer Don McNeil of Cockshutt. The caption has been corrected here online.

Editor Dave Bedard — who really should have been able to identify Neil Armstrong in a photo — wrote the incorrect caption. He regrets the error and apologizes to Scott and to readers of the December print edition. – Dave B.

The post Right stuff, wrong time: How a team in Ontario developed the highest-capacity rotary combine of its day appeared first on Grainews.

However, dry and warm conditions increase the risk of combine fires — especially when harvesting sunflowers.

In 2024, North Dakota is expected to harvest an estimated 320,000 acres of oil sunflowers and an estimated 72,000 acres of confectionary sunflowers, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). Crop harvest progress reporting through NASS indicated that sunflower harvest was 28 per cent complete in North Dakota on Oct. 21, which is ahead of last year’s 19 per cent harvest completion progress.

North Dakota’s northern neighbour Manitoba, meanwhile, is estimated by Statistics Canada to have put about 44,900 acres into sunflowers this year with an expected total yield of over 36,000 tonnes. As of Oct. 22, the provincial ag department estimated Manitoba’s sunflower harvest at about 39 per cent complete.

(Total Canadian sunflower acres seeded this year were estimated at almost 60,000, well down from the previous two crop years.)

Warm and dry weather conditions have allowed harvest to progress quickly, with limited precipitation-related delays. However, warm, dry and windy conditions increase the risk for combine fires, warns Angie Johnson, North Dakota State University Extension farm and ranch safety co-ordinator.

“Mix warm, dry harvest conditions with a high wind speed, and you have a recipe for harvest fires, especially when combining sunflowers,” Johnson says.

According to Daryl Ritchison, North Dakota Agricultural Weather Network (NDAWN) director and NDSU state climatologist, autumn in North Dakota is one of the windiest seasons.

“The high wind speeds we are experiencing and the large amount of extremely dry plant material in our fields and grasslands creates perfect conditions for fire when provided with an ignition source, such as the hot exhaust from the combine’s turbocharger or exhaust manifold, or even from an electrical malfunction in a plastic wiring harness on the combine,” Johnson says.

Combine fires can occur at any time with the right conditions. Sunflowers, however, pose a greater risk because of the large volume of dust and particulate they produce while being harvested, she adds.

Research from South Dakota State University shows the white portion inside the stalk, known as the pith, breaks down into very small, tiny particulate pieces with large surface areas that easily get sucked into the fan that is pulling air through the machine’s radiator to cool down the engine. That pith dust and particulate easily stick to engine and exhaust components and can ignite when coming in contact with the turbocharger and exhaust system of the combine.

“Believe it or not, there was a time when producers quit raising sunflowers because of the fire risk and loss of combines due to fires,” Johnson says. “Fortunately, we have improved prevention tools and strategies to help mitigate and reduce the risk of combine fires during sunflower harvest.”

Johnson shares the following tips for reducing the risk of combine fires while harvesting sunflowers:

Pre-operational checks. Take time to walk around the combine before the start of each day during harvest season. Use an air compressor or leaf blower every day when the machine is off and cooled down to remove dirt, dust, chaff and other plant reside that has accumulated. Always wear hearing protection, eye protection and respiratory protection such as an N95 mask when using an air compressor or leaf blower to remove plant dust and reside. While blowing off residue, look in high-risk areas, such as the engine and engine compartments, exhaust systems, and fluid systems, such as hydraulic pumps, pump drives, and fuel lines. In addition, monitor electrical systems, such as fuse boxes, as well as gearboxes, batteries and cables. When cleaning, take time to look for any issues that require repair, such as leaking hydraulic hoses that can cause chaff to stick and build up, creating an easy fuel source for a fire.

Take time to service the machine daily based on the combine’s operator manual. Grease and lubricate bearings and chains and continue to look for areas that have excessive wear or damage.

Watch for wiring issues. Today’s combines are controlled by many sensors and electrical components that are extremely complex. Take time to glance through wiring systems to see where wires appear to be unrestrained or if wires appear to be damaged from rubbing or making contact with moving parts.

Monitor gauges and warning signs. If you begin to notice increased fuel consumption, loss of hydraulic pressure, fuses that continue to fail or blow out regularly, or increased temperature gauges on your machine, take the time to stop and determine the cause, as these warning signs indicate a malfunction of the machine.

Use an infrared thermometer. Warm up your combine before taking it to the field and use an infrared thermometer to determine the operating temperature of your combine’s bearings. Safely open the combine’s shields, and from a safe distance, point the infrared thermometer at a bearing to read the measured temperature. If a bearing is at a higher temperature than the others, it is time to replace that bearing, as it may be worn or damaged. Infrared thermometers are inexpensive (less than US$50) and can be found at many hardware and farm stores. Hot bearings are a combustion source.

Install an air intake kit. An air intake kit allows clean air found above the combine’s “dust cloud” to enter the combine’s air intake screen, instead of taking in the dusty, dirt-filled air produced from harvesting the crop. Take the time to consider an option that will work best for you and your combine.

Avoid combining during fire danger conditions. Relative humidity values are low in the fall, increasing the risk of fire, especially in the late afternoon hours. Keep an eye on the air temperature and wind speeds. Shutting down when conditions are hot, dry and windy could prevent you from losing your combine to a fire.

Shutting down for the night. Always allow combines to cool down before parking them inside a shed for the night. Also allow the combine to cool down before refueling the machine. Make it a safety practice to shut the combine off before refueling.

Carry two fully-charged fire extinguishers. Ideally, you should have two 20-lb. charged fire extinguishers on your combine. Have them ready and operational and review with workers how to use them when needed.

Create a soil perimeter. If you choose to harvest during high wind and temperature conditions, make a tillage pass around the perimeter of the field to prevent the possibility of a fire spreading to other areas on the landscape should a combine fire occur. If possible, consider having a water truck nearby.

“Good machine maintenance, cleaning and monitoring can help reduce the incidence of combine fires during crop harvest,” Johnson says. “Make farm safety a priority on your farm this fall. Combines and crops are replaceable – you are not.”

More information on crop harvest fire prevention is available on NDSU’s ag extension website.

The post Take steps to prevent combine fires in sunflowers appeared first on Grainews.

While there’s already been a lot of work done on the matters of volunteer canola issues and canola harvest loss, recent research from the University of Manitoba aims to get a better handle on the problem of volunteer canola in soybeans.

Rob Gulden, a U of M researcher and acting associate head of the plant science department, says many variables affect canola harvest loss rates — and they’re tough to isolate.

There are mechanical factors, including combine speed, settings and separator type. Your chosen canola variety will also affect the amount of pod shatter.

Gulden has found harvest losses average about 5.9 per cent, but due to the higher yields of modern canola cultivars, those numbers can rise significantly and contribute more to the volunteer canola seed bank.

Combine settings play a big role in harvest loss, but manufacturer and type of combine (rotary or conventional) are less important.

Laura Schmidt, a production specialist with Manitoba Pulse and Soybean Growers, said limiting canola harvest loss is “step one.”

That means “just keeping the seeds in the pods longer so we can actually harvest them,” she said. “Make sure that you harvest as much of that crop as possible.”

In the short-term, that won’t stop canola seed already under the surface. The oilseed is resilient when it comes to dormancy, Schmidt noted.

Improving management now won’t necessarily stop future flushes. Canola is grown so frequently across the Prairies that the soil seed bank is constantly being restocked.

Light soil disturbance in fall, such as with a harrow, can limit the problem.

“It actually encourages a lot of those seeds to germinate in the fall, and then they won’t persist and they won’t become part of the seed bank,” Gulden said.

Chemical control

There can be significant crossover between the herbicide resistance profile of canola and that of soybeans if the producer isn’t careful about varieties. Doubling up Roundup Ready systems, for example, takes glyphosate off the table for control.

If there is no good herbicide option, canola is a highly competitive plant that holds its own against soybeans.

In 2017, Gulden and the Manitoba Pulse and Soybean Growers partnered to explore herbicide options against volunteer canola in Xtend soybeans.

Faster-acting modes of action were more effective at preventing soybean yield loss, especially under high volunteer canola pressure, the study found.

A variety of herbicides with different modes of action proved effective for in-crop management of volunteer canola in soybeans.

“Certainly, there are herbicides that can be used in crops or additional herbicides to manage volunteer canola within the soybean crop,” Gulden said.

Maximize density

Cultural control also plays a part in tamping down yield losses, Gulden said. Narrow rows work well.

“We’ve shown that making sure that we have good soybean plant stand density — 180,000 plants per acre or more — really reduces the need for herbicide to control wheat (and) volunteer canola,” he said.

Inter-row tillage can remove interval plants but does nothing to get rid of canola in the row.

In most cases, yield loss from volunteer canola is a manageable problem when the right tools are used, Gulden and Schmidt said.

The post How to keep last year’s canola out of your beans appeared first on Grainews.

For its part, John Deere has been building the T670 conventional straw walker model for those customers who want better-quality straw for baling — one area where the conventional combine generally outperforms the rotary.

This spring John Deere announced the T670 will soon be replaced by the updated T6 800, which improves on the T670 design and begins production this fall.

“On June 1 we introduced the new T6 800 combine to North America,” says John Deere’s go-to-market manager for combines and front-end equipment, Bergen Nelson. “There’s definitely some opportunity and interest from customers that have a walker combine today and are after higher straw quality. There’s a lot of new features on the T6 800, replacing the T670.

“We brought a lot of features from the S7 and X9 combines over to the T6 800. Updating the cab, larger grain tank (now 383 bushels). The unloading auger speed has been updated to almost 4.3 bushels per second — the same unloading rate as S Series combines.”

The Class 7, T6 800 will use a 402 horsepower Gen 2, 9.0-litre Deere diesel powerplant like the rotary S7 600 and S7 700 models. It can be mated to a three-speed or Deere’s step-less ProDrive transmission.

RELATED: Check out the T6 800 specifications on AgDealer.com

Up front, operators will notice a big improvement with the cab.

“It’s the same cab that’s available on our S7 and X9 combines,” says Nelson. “That means it’s going to have additional cup holders, heat to the feet, G5 integrated command centre. It will have all the functionality all operators are accustomed to on the X9 combines, as well as integrated receiver, JD Link modem to stream their agronomic data to their John Deere Operations Center account.

READ MORE: Deere expands customer repair capabilities northward

“So, overall more comfort, more visibility, more LED lights than they are accustomed to if they own a current T670. It’s a substantial upgrade as far as operator comfort.”

The other technology available on the T6 800 is comparable to its sister lines. It’s machine-sync compatible, which allows the combine and a tractor and grain cart to pair up during the unloading process — and it also has available ground speed automation.

“That system allows the machine to speed up and slow down automatically, based on operator input as well as machine input like rotor pressure and engine load,” Nelson says. “That’s new this year for the T Series.

“Terrain setting automation is a technology that automatically changes the fan speed, sieve and chaffer based on the roll and pitch by the GPS of the machine. So we’re seeing a pretty significant increase in clean grain capacity, keeping grain in the machine versus rolling out the back, depending on what size hill our customer would be operating on.

“Depending on how the machine is equipped, the customer can have the option of putting the HillMaster system on, which is a hydraulic system automatically levelling the combine up to 22 degrees. There is an update on this system, with a different valve that allows the system to operate smoother. The operators will have a smoother experience.”

The T6 800 can be mated to the brand’s 35-foot hinged flex draper header or a 40-foot rigid draper header with a flexible cutter bar.

With the greater demand from farmers in Europe for conventional combines, it’s no surprise the T6 800s will be built in Deere’s Zweibrucken, Germany combine plant rather than at their Harvester Works at East Moline, Illinois, where the rotaries are assembled — at least those bound for North American farms.

“We’re excited to bring out the walker machine, the T6 800 to the U.S. and Canadian market with a new cab, new technology, new styling, increased grain tank capacity and increased unloading rate,” says Nelson.

“This will be available around August (to order for the 2025 season).”

The post Deere’s T6 800 combine expands on conventional wisdom appeared first on Grainews.

“When a combine sits there for two minutes it feels like three hours for the farmer,” says Marcel Kringe, founder and CEO of Bushel Plus Ltd., which has established the Bushel Plus Harvest Academy in Canada. It will start conducting training sessions for growers and ag professionals this year on how to get the most out of a combine and, importantly, how to keep it rolling when it counts.

“We can teach them how fast and quick this is. They can do a ton of stuff before harvest even starts. That’s really the eye-opening thing, I think. It’s easier to fine-tune in the field once the understanding of the machine is there, which is what we train, and the pre-harvest setting is done.

“It’s all about value and how to make a combine work no matter what kind of combine you have. It’s really understanding the inner workings of a combine and how one change creates a chain reaction throughout the machine, and how different harvest conditions can influence that. You cannot just compare settings with other people and hope for the best.”

VIDEO: Setting up combines to limit harvest loss

Kringe, who has a background in agricultural engineering, says he has spent most of the last two decades working with custom harvesters and grain growers in many different regions of the world, getting combines to operate at peak performance. His firm also operates a similar combine consulting business in Europe, and is working with Assiniboine Community College at Brandon, Man. and Lakeland College in Alberta to help train students in combine operation.

“We’ve been doing training in Canada and the U.S. for a little while,” he says, “but at the same time we were able to continue a business in Germany where someone wanted to retire. He had been doing combine clinics for over 25 years all over Europe. We’ve taken over that company. We now combine all the knowledge from Europe and North America and made one big Harvest Academy out of it.”

Bushel Plus is taking bookings from grower organizations, seed growers, equipment dealers or anyone who wants to arrange a seminar on how to properly set combines.

READ MORE: How to reduce canola combine losses

“We got a lot of questions from farmers about these training programs,” he says. “We’ve done a lot of keynote speaking on it. We can customize the program, depending on the customer. We can be very specific, for example, for seed growers that are very conscious about grain quality.

“We can customize a half-hour to one-hour speech about problems inside the combine through the threshing and separating system, all the way up to a full day where we go through the entire combine front to back.”

‘Myth-busting’

While he acknowledges many growers are pretty good at setting combines, he has found there are still many persistent misconceptions.

“We get the very same questions in Europe that we get here. We get the same misconceptions in the different countries where we work. We’re doing a lot of myth-busting.”

Much of the training Kringe’s firm offers can be applied across all different brands of combines, but he is also able to address the different models available and the setting considerations that are unique to each one.

“There is a lot of stuff that applies to all brands, but there are a lot of things we have to point out that are different in the different machines or sometimes even different models within a brand.”

To find out more about the Bushel Plus Harvest Academy or arrange a training event, Kringe can be contacted through the company’s website.

“This is kind of filling a need,” he says. “We got a lot of feedback from the industry, seed companies, grain associations and farmers that asked us if we would do more of this.”

The post Learn to get the best performance from a combine appeared first on Grainews.

For maximum yield, canola should be cut at 60 per cent seed colour change on the main stem — or later. This gives seeds on side branches time to firm up and contribute to yield. Based on a survey of canola growers at the end of 2020, about half of swathed canola acres are swathed too early for maximum yield.

When combining starts, CCC agronomy specialists recommend drop pans to measure losses and a little extra time to adjust combine settings to keep losses to one per cent, or less.

And, finally, to limit storage losses, check bins regularly — even if canola seems to be at low risk for spoilage.

Here are three questions on the harvest and storage theme. Answers are provided at the end of the article.

Question 1. When combining a thin canola crop, losses out of the back of the combine can increase if settings are not adjusted. Which of the following is one adjustment to consider if crop volume is less than usual?

A. Open up the concave spacing
B. Reduce ground speed
C. Reduce fan speed
D. Set the sieves to almost closed

Question 2. The Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute (PAMI) recently studied canola storage in large 25,000-bushel bins. Which of the following was an important discovery from this study?

A. Storage risk with large bins is reduced with a gravity-driven spreader to level the grain peak.
B. Safe storage recommendations developed 20 to 30 years ago do not apply to large bins.
C. To keep canola safe in storage, it should not be kept in bins larger than 5,000 bushels.
D. Typical fans may not provide the required airflow when large bins are filled to the top.

Question 3. The following four factors can all increase the spoilage risk for canola in storage. Which one was particularly noteworthy for Harvest 2021?

A. Green dockage
B. Hot canola
C. High-moisture canola
D. Weed seeds

Combine settings

A thin crop reduces “grain on grain threshing,” which is an important part of efficient combining. Increased ground speed and narrower concave spacing could increase grain on grain threshing. With less material going through the separator combine, a lower fan speed should reduce the number of seeds blowing out of the back. Before making any adjustments, measure losses out of the back of the combine. Then go through these changes one at a time to see what works to reduce those losses.

[PODCAST] Between the Rows: Tipping the scales, combine calibrations, in (bin) monitors ye trust, oats in vogue

The Harvest chapter at canolaencyclopedia.ca has details on how to measure combine losses, and the Combine Optimization Tool at canolacalculator.ca will walk you through appropriate settings for canola.

When it comes to storage, the first goal is to move air through the bin to cool grain and remove any moisture “sweating” from the seeds. This requires airflow. For more about the PAMI study on airflow in large bins, about storage risk factors, like green dockage from canola regrowth, and many other storage tips, please check the Storage chapter at canolaencyclopedia.ca.

Finally, please visit canolawatch.org and sign up to receive Canola Watch email updates.

Quiz answers: 1 (C), 2 (D), 3 (A)

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