Our guest blogger today is Corwyn Lepp, Case IH Combine Product Specialist serving western Iowa, western Minnesota, eastern South Dakota and parts of eastern North Dakota. Read what he has to say, and tell us about harvest conditions in your area.
Farmers in my territory have been running hard for the past 10 days. A patch of rain moved in, which put a short delay on harvest, but otherwise, we’ve had very nice weather.
Corn and soybeans are the primary crops being harvested, with a little bit of wheat. The latest U.S. Department of Agriculture crop progress report showed that 36 percent of Iowa corn is in “good” condition or better. In Minnesota, 48 percent of corn is “good” or better; in North Dakota, 44 percent of corn is “good” or better; and in South Dakota, 51 percent of corn is “good” or better.
Case IH Axial-Flow combines have easily handled harvesting over various terrains in the upper Midwest.
I’ve been helping with Case IH Axial-Flow® combine demonstrations all across my territory over the past 10 days. During those demonstrations, growers have expressed how quiet and roomy the new cabs are. Farmers also are really enjoying the pivoting spout on the end of the unloading auger and being able to adjust the grain flow from the cab. Especially when harvesting soybeans, producers have been impressed with the combine’s power and ease of handling the tough crop condition.
We’ve also been conducting demonstrations of the new Case IH 3162 TerraFlex™ flexible cutterbar draper header. This new header has a fully flexible cutterbar. Growers have responded well to how easy the headers are to adjust and adapt to a variety of ground conditions. The cutterbar header stays neatly under the lowest pod layer, which allows farmers to get more grain when harvesting.
While being impressed with Case IH equipment, producers in my territory are always concerned about ever-increasing input costs and how that’s going to affect their bottom line.
Agronomic DesignSM is another concept producers are talking about. Of course, when harvesting, their goal is to capture as much of the crop as possible, which is one of the things that Case IH does very well with our Axial-Flow combines and headers.
Another asset Case IH offers is experts like me out in the field with the ability to train and teach growers how to maximize their combine and header settings so they can be more profitable. Not all agricultural equipment brands have product experts with the background knowledge to help farmers be more successful. Two-thirds of all Case IH employees are stationed in the field for this very purpose.
One of the things I do as a Combine Product Specialist is use a tablet out in the field to track customers’ grain loss as they’re harvesting. We also check behind the combine to make sure that the producer is getting every kernel that they possibly can into the hopper.
