Harvesting is a crucial process in farming that needs be handled very carefully because of the risk of grain loss during manual cutting and threshing. However with the increased mechanization farmers nowadays use a combine harvester or multi-crop harvester machine that is able to cut, thresh and separate grains collecting them in the header of the machine and saving it from getting wasted. Because of the harvester machine use the chances of grain loss reduces to a great extent and the quality of the grains also remains good.
Harvesting using a combine harvester has the following advantages than manual harvesting -
- Harvesting with a combine harvester machine eliminates grain loss during cutting and transporting the harvested crop and from incomplete threshing. As a result a farmer can obtain 5% to 10% increased yield than that of manual harvesting.
- A combine harvester is assumed to harvest and thresh approximately one acre of land in an hour. But in manual process it would require at least twelve people and one full day for the same task and that also excluding the threshing. The harvester machines save a lot of time of farmers, sometimes days of time that harvesting requires.
- In the manual harvesting process a separate step for threshing is required, which needs time in days, and more days cleaning. Overall the time from cutting the crops to taking it to the market can take a week or more because of the manual harvesting method. But when using a combine harvester the crop can be market ready on an hour or so.
- The harvesting with the modern multi-crop harvesters provides cleaner grain compared to the manual method, for which a farmers can also get a premium price.
- The mechanized harvesting with a combine harvester priced to be lesser than the manual harvesting cost.
