Touch the Soil News #1994 (photo – Combine unloading into Grain Cart (CCA SA 3.0, Michael Gabler)
For most folks, if harvesting with combine makes strides in efficiency, the response is probably so what. However, most of what we eat came through a combine whose productivity was hauled off the field with a grain cart. These crops include corn, soybeans and wheat. For perspective, America’s crop farming takes up about 320 million acres. The three big crops (corn, soy, wheat) take up 230 million acres or 72 percent of acres, all of which are harvested with combines and grain carts. There is rarely a processed food product that does not contain corn, soy or wheat. Doing the math, assuming a 40 to 45 foot wide header on the combine, that means America’s combines are traveling some 40 to 45 million miles to get across the 230 million acres each year. That’s a lot of stress making sure your grain gets into the grain cart.
Mainstream farming magazine Successful Farming brings the story of how a combine and grain cart can coordinate their travel over a field while the combine is unloading the grain into the grain cart. The point here is that the production of the majority of foods in your diet, are on a trajectory of automation. You can read the full story here:
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