Mechanical harvesters date back to the 1800s and collectively rank among the most important agricultural inventions in history for the time they save and the efficiency gains they provide in perpetuating the global food supply.
Read More (About Harvesters)The use of mechanical harvesters dates back to the 1800s, and today, they are used the world over to harvest crops more quickly and efficiently. Technological and design innovations introduced throughout the ensuing 200-plus years have dramatically reduced the time and labor required to accomplish this crucial task, and modern combines are the culmination of all of this progress, as they allow growers to accomplish the processes of cutting, threshing, and winnowing crops using a single machine. Today’s harvests include intelligent data-gathering and monitoring sensors, along with camera systems, levelling technologies, and other precision farming elements to automate the steering and crop-processing capabilities to maximise production.
Cyrus McCormick patented a mechanical reaper in 1834, and Hiram Moore patented the first combine in 1835. In 1891, William J. Conroy received a patent for his forage harvester. These machines and others helped demonstrate the potential machines held for automating what had previously been a time-consuming, labor-intensive process. Then in 1937, Massey-Harris Chief Engineer Thomas Carroll and his team designed the Massey-Harris No. 20, thought by many to have been the first commercially viable self-propelled combine. A number of leading agricultural machinery brands including Case IH, Claas, Gleaner, John Deere, Massey-Harris descendant Massey Ferguson, New Holland, and others have been hard at work refining the combine ever since.
Recent advancements have increasingly leaned on digital technology to improve what was once solely a mechanical process. Today’s combines have sophisticated onboard computers and sensors that allow them to optimise harvesting speeds based on terrain and crop conditions, as well as GPS-based guidance technologies that automate some of the most repetitive and physically demanding components of harvester operation, making combines and forage harvesters ever more efficient and freeing operators to focus on the big picture.
The Harvesters category on FarmandPlant.ie.com is a wide-ranging one that’s organised into Combine Harvesters, Forage Harvesters (Self-propelled and Pull-type), Headers (Platform, Row Crop, and Forage Headers), and Other Harvesters subcategories.
Platform headers feature a cutter bar, a revolving wheel, and an auger or draper to advance the crop into the combine for processing. Row crop headers function similarly but use points, or snouts, positioned between rows of corn, cotton, rice, sunflowers, or other crops. Forage headers, meanwhile, include row crop, rotary, and windrow styles, and are used to harvest grasses, maize, and other forage plants for processing into silage or haylage.
FarmandPlant.ie offers a big selection of new and used harvesters for sale, including machines from leading manufacturers such as Case IH, Claas, Fendt, John Deere, Kemper, Krone, Massey Ferguson, New Holland, and others.