Interest in new harvesting system

Press, 1 December 1978, Page 9

Interest in new harvesting system

The header harvester may become outmoded. That could be the case if a new Swedish system of whole crop harvesting, said to be the key to a whole new way of farming, was to be widely adopted.

The system, which has been described recently in the English fanning journal, “Power Farming,” has caught the imagination of a Doyleston agricultural contractor, Mr S. P. (Peter) Kirchin, who is busy trying to develop interest in it in New Zealand, where he feels that there is a place for it. A neighbouring cropping iarmer, Mr J. K. Lay, says that he can certainly see advantages in the system, but he adds that he would like to see the best qualified sort of people look into the concept. At a conference in Britain at the end of the January and the beginning of February Mr Ingetnar Bjurenvall, the son of a farmer in central Sweden and an industrialist, will be talking about the system and showing a film, and it has been suggested that it might be appropriate for a small New Zealand delegation to attend that meeting and then perhaps go on to Sweden to look at it there where a pilot plant, which is part of the system, has been working for two years, and a much bigger plant with an output of 30 tonnes of dried material per hour should now be working at Kopingebro at the southern tip of the country. Such a New Zealand team might include people with a background in economics and scientific

knowledge and also a practical arable fanner. Mr Bjurenvall is president of Kockums Construction AB, of Hoganas in Sweden, which has been supplying and erecting the plant at Kopinngebro. About £2M sterling has been invested in this and it will process crops from about 4000 ha of surrounding farmland. Their whole crop harvesting process can be broken down into three stages, according to “Power Farming.” In the first, high capacity selfpropelled harvesters gather the crop, chop it into 30 to 50mm lengths and blow it into containers. The harvester is expected to cost £60,000, but its daily output will be up to 10 times that of a large combine. The second stage involves motor-lorries picking up the containers and taking them to the processing plant, where their contents are tipped into a pit. Drying and processing constitute stage three and this is where most of the action takes place. It is said that every grain is threshed out, dried and graded. The light fraction is separated from the straw and both are pelleted. The whole harvest is reduced to either grain or pellets, which can be handled easily and economically within the plant, back to farms or out to other industries. Kockums claim that their harvesting method recovers all the grain left on the ground and in the straw by the combine or header harvester, as well as the light fraction (chaff, cavings and weed seeds) which is normally wasted and utilisation of which for stock feeds is regarded as very important. They claim that the energy value of these savings all but balances the system’s total energy requirements. So Mr Kirchin comments that the recovery of by-products covers the cost of harvesting — “from what is stated you do your harvesting for nothing because you can sell straws for animal feed or processing into chemicals. In the United Kingdom they are looking into processing straw for paper. . .” In the New Zealand situation, if straws were not all required for stock feed processing it has been suggested that they might be a source of fuel for drying. There are many other interesting implications of the system too. The harvesting of crops is reported to be a simple, straightforward job at high speed regardless of the weather. It is claimed that harvesting of cereal crops can start two dr three weeks earlier at the old binder ripe stage and finish later. Cereals can be harvested at about 45 per cent moisture. The way could thus be opened up for introducing new and different crops

into new areas to take advantage of the potentially extended harvest season, and with fields cleared more promptly allowing earlier cultivation again there might be a chance to grow a catch crop or a more profitable variety. The system would certainly add to the flexibility of cropping programmes. A major argument in favour of the system is its energy saving aspects. It involves exploiting all growth to the full — the reservoir of energy created by the sun out of the soil, air and water. Apart from the ease and efficiency of separating out grain during the drying precess, an outstanding advantage of the plant, according to “Power Farming,” is its ability to separate the remainder of the crop into different and highly individual fractions. The whole crop harvester is equally capable of handling fresh or wilted green crops. Oil seed, such as rape, could be put through the system and also other seed crops since the drier temperature can be reduced to ensure that the viability of the seed is unimpaired. An aspect that certainly appealed to Messrs Lay and Kirchin was that removal of whole crops, including weed seeds, could lead to the growing of more weed-free crops and also a reduction in the need to do so much chemical spraying. What is in the system for the farmer? Kockums, speaking in the Swedish and European scene, say that it may not make much of a difference to a farmer’s income in gross terms, but they say he will be considerably better off because of the substantial savings in variable and fixed costs. What could be appealing to the New Zealand farmer about the system is that they say that the farmer’s machinery costs, in particular, could be reduced by up to a half. The system, too, could ffee the farmer from quite a lot of work he now does and could allow him to devote more time to growing crops and raising stock. In New Zealand, as well as Sweden, it has been seen that the system might lend itself to cooperative control. Mr Kirchin believes that any disadvantages that the system might have Would be more than outweighed by its benefits. Mr Kirchin has been in communication with Mr Bjurenvall and he has indicated Sn interest in coming to New Zealand. His Company’s aim is to get pilots' plants, for the system established in (Other countries. t ßut he is not concerned about pressing development unduly. He says that they will not be pushing anybody into adopting this system. “Once people have grasped the total implication of what we are saying they will come to realise the impossibility of not harvesting in this way.” One of the possible outlets for the straw fraction of the outputs of the system is seen to be in paper making. On the situation in the United Kingdom Mr Bjurenvall has commented that this country imports all of its pulp requirements yet it grows very large quantities of cereals and destoys 4M tonnes of straw a year. However, two scientists at the Agricultural Engineering Institute at Lincoln are rather less enthusiastic about whole crop harvesting in the New Zealand scene than Mr Kirchin.

Mr John Dunn, principal research officer at the institute, says that developments should certainly be kept under review, but he doubts whether a mission should gn to the other side

of the world for the specific purpose of looking into the system. He and Mr Peter Steele, a research officer at the institute, rather see such inquiries being combined with other investigations like looking at beet harvesting machinery for energy farming purposes,

They note that the concept of whole crop harvesting is not really new — whole crop harvesting was practised in the days of the old reaper and binder.

One of the major obstacles to the Swedish system is seen to be the lack of outlets in New Zealand for supplementary feeds for stock. This is the reverse of ti e situation in countries like Hungary, Rumania and Czechoslovakia, where winters are cold and stock are housed and have to be fed inside, and in those countries whole crop harvesting is practised. Nor are ready outlets available for industrial use of straws and in fact Mr Steele, who compared whole crop harvesting with conventional harvesting, with particularly harvesting of straw in mind, for a masterate thesis in Britain about three years ago, says that in England and Wales about four years ago only' about one per cent of straw was used industrially. Another reason why the Swedish system might not take on so well here is that farmers tend to be less co-operatively minded or oriented than in countries like Sweden and Denmark. although it is admitted that with some of the newer crops like peas for freezmg and lucerne for pelleting a system has been accepted under which outside nachinery comes in to do the harvesting. There is some doubt, too, about whether such a system could be used in, say. nandling of barley for malting. This is an unknown area at this stage. And, of course, there is the big question of what would nappen to all the harvesting machmery and si'os on farms'that would become redundant if the Swedish system was introduced.

Mr Steele says that from the point of view of the student of mechanisation the system is very interesting and quite fascinating, out as a practical proposition it is not believed to be “on” under New Zealand conditions in the foreseeable future.