From LEAF Farmer Duncan Farrington
December Newsletter
Unaffordable Farm Machinery?
Those of you who have been reading my column for a while will know about our new (to us) combine harvester, and whenever we have people around the farm on LEAF visits, they’re always impressed by the shear size of such machines. So this month I thought a few figures would look as equally impressive as Dominic’s car column.
The combine harvester is the most expensive piece of machinery the average arable farmer will buy. Even our John Deere CTS at six years old cost a similar amount to a luxury sports car, and this is for a machine that will only be used for around eight weeks a year. Traditionally, crops were cut by people with scythes, a method unchanged for centuries, and then latterly by horse drawn binders. With this system the corn was cut, made into sheaths, ‘stooked’ in the fields then put into big stacks ready to be threshed at a later date, where the grain is separated from the straw and seed coats “Separating the wheat from the chaff.” The modern combine harvester, as the name suggests combines both these operations in one machine.
Combines are a fairly recent creation. My Great Grandfather imported the first combine that Rustons Engineers sold during the war. He bought an International B64 from America, had to pay for it before it left the States, and was unable get insurance against U-boat attack across the Atlantic. It arrived in parts in wooden crates where upon Rustons decided they rather Mr Farrington assemble this weird machine, so he did. This is a far cry from today’s world, so what does the latest combine do?
The range topping John Deere STS 9880 comes with all the usual toys you would expect; air-con, radio CD player, sat-nav accurate to within 10cm (needed for the self steering capability), yield mapping downloadable to the office PC, enough lights to light up your average sports arena, and of course a fridge to put your bottle of mineral water in. The machine is no shrinking violet, with a top road speed restricted to 18mph, who cares because at 9.6m long, 4m high, 3.5m wide and weighing in at 16tonnes (empty), it certainly has presence. It is powered by a 12litre straight 6 480hp engine, with power bulge to 510hp, at a sedately 2,200rpm. Whilst the 996litre fuel tank will just about keep you going for ten hours. A bigger tank would be better, but anything over 1,000lts is classed as a fuel tanker, and all the regulations that entails!
It is in the field however where such machines thrive. Fitted with a 9m wide cutting table it is capable of harvesting around 55tonnes of wheat per hour, that’s enough to make 69,000 loaves of bread, or enough rapeseed to make 25,000 bottles of Mellow Yellow. This machine will munch through a football pitch every couple of minutes, cutting, threshing and taking on board 9,000kg of grain per tank full, before emptying into trailers to go off to the farm. Although they may only work for a couple of months a year, in that time the biggest combines are capable of harvesting 15,000 tonnes of grains, which would take an awful long time for one man and a scythe.
So when I asked our local dealer what this all came down to, the answer was around £282,000 including VAT, “Oh and if you would like it on tracks it will be a further £20,000 sir.” Will I ask for one in my Christmas stocking this year? Probably not, but they do a rather nice model version for a bit less, the only problem being there is no fridge for my mineral water. Happy Christmas.
