23.07.2021 Gigantism in agriculture.

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Friday 23rd 58F, heavy overcast but calm. An hour and three quarters walk today. Only 293 pictures.

The constant demand for greater efficiency in Danish farming has some slightly amusing, side effects. The machinery is getting bigger and bigger. So big, in fact, that normal roads can no longer manage their girth. 

While on yesterday's ride I could hear a whine coming from behind me. I glanced round to see a giant, tracked combine harvester following me down the lane. A car ahead dived into a field entrance. Where I joined it. Just in time for the colossal machine to pass unhindered. Two touring cyclists up ahead took to the fields just to let it pass.

The width of the front rotor on these machines is already greater than many, main roads. So they are drawn lengthways on specialist trailers. A glance at the local, harvested fields might suggest the width of the rotor from the lanes of hay. Left there for huge, specialist balers to tidy up after the grain harvest. The truth is that the hay lines are only half of the width of the rotor. The hay is expelled directly from the machine. So the rotor covers both empty tracks on either side of the hay lines. The bales are becoming so large and so heavy, that specialist machines are needed to load them onto trailers.

The steady increase in size of the farming machinery must soon require tree felling or hedge clearance on either side of the rural lanes. Even the spraying machines are now based on the largest combine harvester bodies. Often with tracks. With the front, steering wheels, if any taller than a man. There are lots of four track machines now.

These low ground pressure measures are an attempt to protect the agricultural soil from compaction. The machines are GPS guided to minimise their contact with the ground. So only the "spray tracks" are ever touched by the wheels. Or the more recent tendency to caterpillar tracks. Over time these machinery tracks sink well below the rest of the field. 

The advantage of these large machines is the speed at which they will clear a prairie-sized field. Not just to save on a farm's manpower requirements. But also to avoid the risk of fire during the ever more common droughts. 

The speed of harvesting means that the entire crop can be removed at the best time for quality. Only two or three days pass from a standing crop to bare stubble. This, in a field several thousands of meters on a side. 

The giant machines are unfazed by steep inclines. Where a normal tractor would suffer from wheelspin the harvesters can slog up slopes which would be difficult to climb on foot. Tractors themselves grow ever larger. Often fitted with multiple caterpillar tracks these days. Their implements grow larger too. So that hydraulics are needed to unfold them to their full and quite unbelievable size.

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