Improved control and flexibilty over grain revenue

The combine is the single most capital-intensive piece of equipment on a grain farm. Utilising as much of its capacity as possible is important to overall farm efficiency, writes Stehan Cloete.

- Stehan Cloete

A state-of-the-art combine harvester can never achieve its full potential if a farmer’s in-field logistics support is unable to keep up with production flow.

With this in mind, AgriCAD, an innovative local implement manufacturer, has designed the MB mother bin series to ensure optimal harvester utilisation. The mother bin is a large trailer used as portable grain storage in the land.

It could be argued that if you have an idle harvester in the harvesting window, you should probably have invested in a lower-capacity harvester.

A standing harvester means that you are extending your harvesting window and therefore a lower-capacity machine might have been a better fit.

On average, the difference between classes can be as much as R500 000, which is just below 10% of the value of an average harvester, excluding the difference in header value. Investing unnecessarily means not only paying interest on a loan, but is also an opportunity cost.