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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The Bushel Plus system attaches a drop pan to the underside of a combine magnetically, allowing it to be dropped remotely at any time by the operator to collect a sample of what, if anything, the combine is throwing out the back. That allows for an accurate measure of grain loss.

The SmartPan system can be paired with the company’s SmartDrop app.

By dropping the pan and collecting a sample, an operator can verify the settings on the combine are operating as efficiently as expected, as well as calibrate in-cab loss monitors.

“Seed-to-harvest precision is only as good as the data behind it,” Bushel Plus CEO Marcel Kringe says.

“By working hand-in-hand with John Deere, we’re delivering a streamlined flow of data between field measurements and machine analytics, enabling farmers to refine combine calibration and automation for more efficient harvesting, reduced grain loss, and ultimately higher profitability.”

The post Bushel Plus SmartPan system now available from John Deere dealers 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.

“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.”

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‘We found a problem, now how do we fix it?’ This was a common question drop-pan inventor Trevor Scherman heard when producers discovered they were seeing too much harvest loss. He heard it enough that it gave him an idea for a new venture.

With all of the online information floating around the internet – which may not always be reliable or suited to crop conditions – Sherman created Combinesettings.com, a place where producers can see how to tweak their combine settings to get more crop in the bin.

In this video, Scherman talks about his goal of helping farmers harvest more, and the 1st place recognition he received for Combinesettings at Manitoba Ag Days last month.

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The On-Farm Survey of Combine Grain Loss in Canola Across Western Canada involved in-field testing at 31 farms across Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba from Aug. 22 to Oct. 18, 2019. A total of 50 combines, including 40 different models from six manufacturers, were analyzed as part of the project.

Lorne Grieger, PAMI’s director of technical sales, says the primary objective of the project was to gain a better understanding of actual canola combine losses and the variables that can affect those losses. A secondary goal of the study was to help educate producers on methods for effectively measuring their canola losses.

While there have been other studies conducted on the subject, Grieger says what made PAMI’s study different was the fact that several new varieties of canola and production techniques have been introduced in the intervening years and it had yet to be determined what effects they could have on combine losses.

During the in-field tests, drop pans provided by Bushel Plus and ScherGain were attached underneath each of the combines and dropped once the combines were operating to measure losses. Each loss test was repeated three times per combine to ensure accuracy. Canola seed collected in the pans was separated from the chaff and then weighed.

Overall, the results of the study measured an average combine loss of 1.3 bushels per acre or 2.8 per cent of yield. That included a minimum loss of 0.2 bushels per acre (0.4 per cent of yield) and a maximum loss of 4.1 bushels per acre (10.7 per cent of yield).

As part of the study, investigators looked at several different variables to determine their potential effects on combine losses. That included harvest timing, ambient temperature, relative humidity, weather conditions, wind conditions, harvest practices (straight cut versus swathing), grain moisture content, ground speed, grain feed rate, combine settings and combine age.

Environmental effects

Grieger says one of the more interesting findings of the study was the effect ambient environmental conditions can have on combine grain loss.

According to the results, significantly lower losses were experienced with higher ambient temperatures — 0.8 bushels per acre (bu/ac) when the temperature was greater than 23 C compared with 1.4 bu/ac when the temperature was less than 23 C.

The study results also indicated that relative humidity can also play a significant role in determining canola seed loss. It showed significantly lower losses were experienced with lower relative humidity — 1.2 bu/ac when the relative humidity was below 45 per cent compared with 1.6 bu/ac when the relative humidity was 45 per cent or higher.

In addition, the results showed significantly lower losses were experienced during sunny harvest conditions compared with cloudy or partly cloudy conditions. Average losses during sunny conditions were 1.0 bu/ac compared with 1.1 bu/ac in partly cloudy conditions and 1.7 bu/ac in cloudy conditions.

“When it’s easier to thresh, we saw lower losses as a whole,” Grieger says. “It’s one factor that can be considered when the combine is being operated to what that condition is and, as a result, what are the potential losses and the adjustments that can be made to reduce losses as a whole.”

Ground speed

Ground speed was also shown to play a huge role in determining combine losses during harvest. The study results showed significantly lower losses were experienced with a slower ground speed. Losses were measured at 1.2 bu/ac at a ground speed of below 4.3 miles per hour compared with 2.2 bu/ac at speeds above 4.3 m.p.h.

“Ground speed was one of the factors that really stood out when we consider the ambient conditions and the type of methods used. It was over a bushel per acre difference,” Grieger says. “If you go slower, all things being equal, we saw losses were lower compared to a faster ground speed.”

Perhaps the most surprising result to come out of the study was the fact the age of a combine doesn’t automatically determine how much canola seed can be lost during harvest.

In fact, the study’s results indicated a well-set, older combine can outperform a poorly set, newer combine.

Combines manufactured between 1993 and 2005 had an average loss of 0.8 bu/ac compared with 1.5 bu/ac for those manufactured between 2006 and 2014 and 1.3 bu/ac for machines manufactured between 2015 and 2019.

“Technology isn’t necessarily a deciding factor,” Grieger says. “If you understand your machine regardless of age and it’s maintained well and set up properly, it can be very effective in terms of reducing losses in canola as a whole.”

Although the study showed that straight cutting resulted in slightly higher combine losses than swathing (1.5 bu/ac compared with 1.2 bu/ac), Grieger explains it was a fairly small sample size and more testing is required to provide a more complete picture.

Getting it right

Grieger says one of the biggest take-home messages from the project for producers is the importance of making sure combines are set up for the type of harvest methods they are using and with the environmental variables they are dealing with at a given time.

He also stresses it’s important for growers to take regular loss samples to set benchmarks, which will help them to determine what kinds of adjustments to their combines are necessary.

“You can’t control the weather, but you can control how you operate your machine and how you set it up,” he adds.

Funding for the study was provided by SaskCanola, Manitoba Canola Growers, Alberta Canola, the Canola Council of Canada (CCC) and the Canadian Agricultural Partnership.

Changing times

Shawn Senko, a CCC agronomy specialist, says it’s important for studies like the PAMI project to be conducted periodically to incorporate the latest innovations in technologies and methodologies used by growers.

“Over time, things like the canola cultivars change, their yields and traits change, and things like straight cutting come along and change the way canola flows through the combine. Then the machinery changes. That all has an effect on things, so it’s good to see what effect those changes have on losses,” he explains.

Senko adds one of the most important lessons to be learned from the study is the importance of getting out into the field and testing for combine losses.

“That’s the No. 1 thing. You can’t make any adjustments or correct anything if you don’t know where you are starting from,” he says.

“Once you have that baseline and know how things change through the day, you can make those adjustments and know you are correcting things.”

Codie Nagy farms 7,000 acres near the town of Ogema, Sask. Nagy read the study’s results online and while he didn’t find anything particularly surprising in the data, he thinks it was a worthwhile exercise.

“I think … just knowing that every type of combine has losses if not set properly is more useful than all of the other data generated out of research like that,” he says.

“It gets everybody thinking about what’s happening on their own farms. If they see there’s research being done showing there’s a large amount of losses regardless of the colour of the combine, I think that will push a lot of people into getting a drop pan to put behind their combine to accurately measure what they are losing.”

The post How to reduce canola combine losses 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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“This is a quote I like to use about managing your harvest, and your combine,” he told the crowd. “‘A combine is a highly complex factory with a continually changing feed stock.’ That’s no big deal, except it’s expected to have a highly consistent, high-quality output at all times.”

It’s those changing conditions that make keeping a combine performing to its maximum potential no easy thing. Crop conditions naturally change at different places in the field. Add variable weather conditions to that and things get even more complicated.

• Read more: Monitoring your harvest loss

“I don’t have magic combine settings for you,” he continued. “That’s just like the complex factory. There are so many different parameters that are changing all the time that there are no magic settings. There are good places to start, and you have to adjust from there.”

So where are those good places to start and what should farmers change? Is it just a matter of slowing down ground speed to cure all the problems?

How slow should I go?

“I like to talk in terms of grain feed rate over ground speed,” said McDonald. “It’s a lot more accurate. I really encourage farmers to think in terms of bushels per hour. That is the most consistent metric you have available to relate this year to next, and one crop to another.

“Ground speed is only a good metric if our crop is perfectly uniform. And it never is. What we can do is talk in terms of grain feed rate. The amount of MOG (material other than grain) compared to grain is somewhat consistent, or is relatable anyway.”

It’s the amount of material going up the feeder house that really influences the amount of grain loss. As the amount of MOG going into the combine increases, it tends to carry more kernels out the back with it. But losses will also be higher if too little material is flowing through.

“You can see at a low rate, the loss is a little bit higher,” he explained. “When the feed rate is higher, it lowers down a little, then it starts to go up. The shape of the curve can vary in how quickly it rises. Sometimes there is a little bit more of a flat spot in the middle of it. But once you’re going three miles per hour, as a rule, loss will go up. It might stay relatively constant, and it might only go up small amounts, but it will go up.”

How high should I cut?

Reducing the amount of MOG with a higher header height is one way to improve combine capacity. But leaving higher stubble might require another field pass to prepare for the next crop year.

“The amount of MOG you take in really matters,” McDonald said. “You might be able to harvest faster with less loss if you just clipped a little bit higher and dealt with the residue later on.”

How do I know?

In all cases, growers should be checking to see how much grain is being lost. Using drop pans is one simple way to do that. But understanding what’s going on in the combine is important when interpreting what you find in them.

“Be aware of some numbers,” he cautioned. “If we’re going 3.7 m.p.h., we’re going five feet per second. The cleaning shoe on these combines generally oscillates back and forth between four and six times per second. So you’re going to get some pulses. So if you’re out there with a loss pan and you do one check, if you try to drive the same speed and check again, you’re going to get a slightly different number. It’s going to drive you crazy. But you can do some averaging.

“A question we get is, ‘Should I be checking for loss with the chopper or dropping into a windrow?’ Does it make a difference to the combine or the loss collection method?” There’s no simple answer, McDonald said. “The real answer is maybe, maybe not.

“If we drop it in a windrow, there is some advantage there. We can take a five-foot-wide loss pan and effectively catch the width of the entire header. We’ve concentrated that by six or eight times. Now if one seed bounces out, it has less of an effect. Also there’s less chance seeds are going to bounce out, because they’re coming out a lot slower. A disadvantage is we’ve changed the pressure or suction the chopper makes on the cleaning shoe. But I think the benefits are worth it.

“It’s also important to consider the distribution across the (header) width. That can have a big effect. Sometimes you can have grain loss concentrated on one side. The way material exits the rotor, it goes to one side. If you’re not catching the full windrow, you have to take samples from both sides in the spread pattern. Different machines have different tendencies.”

For producers running more than one combine, McDonald recommends checking each one individually. That is important until you’re sure they both respond the same way to settings adjustments.

Fan speed matters too

Understanding how fan speed affects different crops is also critical. Small-seeded crops like canola with much lighter seeds can be blown out at much lower air volumes than something like corn or soybeans, which are much heavier.

“For peas the terminal velocity is around 14 metres per second (of airflow),” says McDonald. “For canola, it’s down around six. For wheat straw and heads, the terminal velocity is around two m/s. So with wheat seeds around eight m/s, if our air speed is somewhere in the middle, the wheat seeds will fall and the trash will fly. This is how we separate. That’s where the challenge comes on canola, because the difference between the seeds and chaff is not as much. So you have to be more precise.”

In the end, managing losses at harvest comes down to a cost-benefit analysis. Keeping losses at their absolute lowest could really slow down harvest operations and cost more than it offers. It’s a balancing act.

No matter what your threshold for loss is, make sure you clearly know what the losses are, said McDonald. And they can only be verified by physically checking.

“Check for loss regularly,” he said. “Maybe not every single day, but every single crop. If you get a rain event and you’re shut down for five days, you probably need to readjust your settings.”

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During a presentation to growers in Brandon in March, Joel McDonald, an engineer at the Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute, said PAMI undertook a study a couple of years ago to see if it could translate the symbols into more relatable data, such as bushels-per-acre loss.

“In 2017 we did a project in Saskatchewan looking at grain loss monitors and ‘Can we use the signal from a grain loss monitor to indicate bushels per acre loss instead of a unit less bar graph or a colourful funnel?” he said. “Why not tell it to farmers in bushels per acre? You’d still have to calibrate it. But if instead of flashing red it was flashing five bushels per acre, maybe that would be a more useful bit of information.

“We did that. We recorded the readings on the monitor and the actual losses out the back of the combine, and then we measured the raw signal off the loss sensor. The findings from that showed that when losses were increasing, the monitor showed an increase, but it wasn’t proportional to the actual loss. Toward the higher end of that loss, once we started getting up into the two to three bushels per acre, the monitor didn’t have the resolution to show the loss was in fact five times what it was at a more reasonable speed. That was in canola, peas and wheat.”

Without relating monitor readings to actual data from catch pan analysis, the indicator lights aren’t telling you much.

Currently, there is nothing like a Nebraska Tractor Test report for combines that provides any hard and fast performance data, so in-field verification remains the only way to determine how they’re doing.

“Find a way to make it easy,” said McDonald. “Find a way that you’ll do it regularly, because it’s important. Catch some residue. It can be a garbage can lid; it could be a Rubbermaid tote lid, virtually anything you could toss under there.”

Once you’ve taken those samples, measure them to determine loss per acre.

“Then you have to quantify the seeds you’ve got for the effective catch area,” he said. “You can measure those by weight, volume or seed count. It doesn’t matter which method you use. What really matters is that you’re doing it.”

Once you’ve calculated the losses a couple of times, making rough notes on the catch pan can speed up the process and give you approximate loss amounts on a bushels-per-acre basis, which should be adequate
to help you determine what, if any, adjustments are required.

“Take a Jiffy marker and write it on your loss pan,” he said. “Then you can take your (conversion) chart or app and throw it in the glove box. We’re not looking for three digits of precision.”

The post Monitoring your harvest loss appeared first on Grainews.

It’s a question Trevor Scherman and his father, Pat, pondered many times on their farm near Battleford, Sask. Trevor says they discussed “where that fine line was (between) how fast can we go and how much crop can we afford to leave in the field.”

One year after harvest, the Schermans sat down to figure out how best to measure their harvest losses. They came up with a product that they dubbed the ScherGain Solution System. It includes a magnetic, rectangular drop pan. A remote control switches the magnets on and off. Trevor says the drop pan easily attaches to the back of most combines in four seconds.

Once the combine is running and the choppers are off, a farmer switches off the magnets. The pan will drop, catching the lost grain. Farmers can then clean the grain with screens and blow out the extra chaff.

ScherGain also comes with a grain gauge and a chart. The chart factors in crop type and header width. Farmers pour the grain into the gauge, and consult the chart to figure out their losses. The system also comes with a battery and two remotes.

Trevor says ScherGain was seven years in the making. The Schermans waited until they’d filed the patent before they started marketing the product. In June 2017, they launched the ScherGain during canolaPALOOZA in Saskatoon.

“It pretty much went viral on Twitter,” says Trevor. “And what we thought we’d sell for the whole season, we sold that day. We had people asking from Australia, Brazil, France, Paraguay. So it’s been pretty amazing.”

Why harvest losses matter

The Canola Council of Canada notes that farmers can lose up to five bushels per acre during harvest. And given the small size of canola seeds, farmers are unlikely to notice those losses unless they measure them.

Trevor said they were very surprised by how much grain they were losing on their own farm. And he says they’ve found other farmers are losing a lot of crop as well.

Often the problem is that farmers are running combines at a higher horse power. While machinery manufacturers talk about horse power, he points out that for crops such as canola, a farmer doesn’t need all that horsepower. Instead, they need to thresh properly, he says.

While finding out how much crop a person is leaving in the field can leave them feeling “shocked and sickened” at first, Trevor says it’s “better to know and correct the problem than to continue to turn a blind eye.”

After all, those losses can be costly. If canola is at $10 a bushel, and a farmer leaves four bushels in the field, that’s $40 per acre, he points out.

“If you can get down to under a bushel, that’s a comfortable loss, for your efficiency and your cost of operation,” says Trevor.

ScherGains sell for $1,800, and the Schermans will ship them internationally. Trevor says they build the product themselves and test every unit before it leaves the shop. “We like to have control of everything.”

As the summer drew to a close, the Schermans had sold all the ScherGains that they could get supplies for, Trevor says. Farmers can pre-order for next year by visiting ScherGain.ca.

“We’re definitely gearing up for next year because demand has been incredible.”

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