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Know How / Harvest equipment

What’s the latest tech on combine harvesters? Can chaser bins improve grain harvest logistics? Do auto controls and remote access improve crop drying management with batch and continuous flow dryers? All these questions answered together with the latest grain trailers and grain storage equipment.

Advice and tips

ROAD LEGAL

Combine road safety: Is your header trailer up to scratch?

Farmers taking combines on the road at harvest time should check whether their header trailers are road legal and fit for purpose. And with many large arable outfits now running…

MACHINERY

Top tips to keep your combine running in the wet

August invariably delivers a spell of bad weather, so we’ve put together 20 top tips from the experts on how to ease the flow of damp crops through the combine.…

HARVEST EQUIPMENT

How to get a big square baler ready for the new season

It is important to spend time in the workshop with any piece of harvest kit before setting out to the field – but arguably especially so for baler operators. Lose a window…

COMBINES

Guide to buying a used hill-sider combine

True full body levelling on combines is not just a nice-to-have feature – for some farms it’s essential. And although the additional cost when buying new isn’t as much as…

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Case studies

HEADERS

Honey Bee swather expands cropping options for Hants grower

Once a popular tool for pre-harvest management, the self-propelled swather has been slowly sidelined in favour of running through with a sprayer to deliver a shot of glyphosate. The attraction…

COMBINES

Driver's view: Steve Bushell rates his New Holland CH7.70

For years the big debate between combine owners, operators and engineers came down on one of two sides – straw walkers or rotors. But by the 1990s the water had…

TECHNOLOGY

Driverless tractor helps ease fresh produce labour shortage

Demand for purple sprouting broccoli might be at an all-time high, but the labour-intensive work involved in getting it from the field to supermarket shelves has left growers seriously vulnerable…

HARVEST EQUIPMENT

Home-built and off-the-shelf round bale accumulator options

Bale accumulators have the potential to massively improve the efficiency of field clearance and there are plenty of bits of kit on offer for those dealing with big squares. But…

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Community

MACHINERY

Inventions Competition 2021: Edward Cragg’s grain dryer

Edward Cragg’s grain dryer automation system Complex category third place Electronics postgraduate Edward Cragg set about bringing the family farm’s 43-year-old Wilder Robomatic batch grain dryer into the 21st century…

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Insights

COMBINES

Machinery Milestones: History of the combine harvester

Threshing machines were an international success story for British manufacturers, and the companies involved became global leaders, but the combine harvester market proved a far harder nut to crack. Britain’s…

COMBINES

Ultimate guide to buying a combine 2022

After something of a stop-start harvest that for numerous growers involved cutting crops new to their rotation, manufacturers and dealers are looking to sign up customers for combines delivering additional…

HEADERS

Buying alternative combine headers - the options

Buying a new combine rarely involved much discussion about header options when there was no choice other than to decide what width to hook on the front. But that has…

COMBINES

How combine add-ons can help slash weed seed spread

Combinable crop producers in the UK are being pushed into a corner when it comes to controlling herbicide-resistant grassweeds and it's looking increasingly likely that the answer will come from…

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News

COMBINES

New 260hp model heads trio of five-walker MF Activa combines

Massey Ferguson has tweaked its entry-level, five-walker Activa range, which now includes the option of the firm’s Multi Crop Separator on all three models. The 260hp 7344 is the biggest…

COMBINES

FieldView offers yield and moisture stats on old combines

FieldView, Bayer's digital farming platform, is the latest to offer a retrofit kit that provides live yield and moisture information on older combines. The system costs £4,400, is suitable for…

HEALTH AND SAFETY

Rail strikes could increase level-crossing risk

Planned rail strikes could leave farmers and growers facing extra risks at unmanned level crossings, Network Rail has warned. Many of the UK’s 2,000 “user-worked crossings” traverse farmland or are…

HARVEST EQUIPMENT

Lamma 2022: Zurn Top Cut Collect weed harvester finds UK home

There are now a handful of Zurn’s Top Cut Collect weed seed harvesters out on UK farms as growers – both conventional and organic – seek a solution to rife…

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Test and reviews

COMBINES

Driver's view: Mathew Caudwell’s John Deere W540i

We get the lowdown on the John Deere W540i combine run by Lincolnshire farmer Mathew Caudwell. We find out why his chose the JD W-series and how it has performed…

COMBINES

Driver's view: John Roberts’ Massey Ferguson Activa 7240

We get the lowdown on the Massey Ferguson Activa 7240 combine run by Shropshire farmer John Roberts. Farm facts Napley Farm, Market Drayton, Shropshire Size 135ha Soil Sandy loam Crops…

COMBINES

Retrofit yield monitor offers crop data on old combines

Canadian outfit Farm TRX has developed a relatively cheap retrofit yield monitor that is able to generate downloadable crop performance maps via apps that run on a standard smartphone or…

HARVEST EQUIPMENT

Video: Driver's view - Tom Hawthorne's Big Bale Transtacker

The very thought of loaders and artic flatbed trailers running over a field collecting bales is enough to send shudders down the spine of any controlled traffic farming (CTF) convert.…

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Video

COMBINES

Video: Claas launches Trion combine range as Tucanos scrapped

Buyers will no longer have to order a model from Claas’ biggest Lexion range to spec all the popular bells and whistles after the German maker launched its new ultra-flexible…

HARVEST EQUIPMENT

Video: Driver's view - Tom Hawthorne's Big Bale Transtacker

The very thought of loaders and artic flatbed trailers running over a field collecting bales is enough to send shudders down the spine of any controlled traffic farming (CTF) convert.…

COMBINES

Video: Claas launches biggest-ever Lexion combine

Claas has just won the most recent hand of combine manufacturer Top Trumps after it launched its most powerful Lexion machines yet. The headline-grabbing flagship 8900 is the biggest in the…

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