The combine harvester, or simply combine, is a machine that harvests grain crops. The name derives from its combining three separate operations comprising harvesting—reaping, threshing, and winnowing—into a single process. Among the crops harvested with a combine are wheat, oats, rye, barley, corn (maize), soybeans and flax (linseed). The waste straw left behind on the field is the remaining dried stems and leaves of the crop with limited nutrients which is either chopped and spread on the field or baled for feed and bedding for livestock.
Combine harvesters are one of the most economically important labor saving inventions, enabling a small fraction of the population to be engaged in agriculture.
Read more about Combine Harvester: History, Combine Heads, Conventional Combine, Hillside Leveling, Sidehill Leveling, Maintaining Threshing Speed, The Threshing Process, Rotary and Conventional Designs, Combine Fires
Famous quotes containing the words combine and/or harvester:
“Italians, and perhaps Frenchmen, consider first whether they like or want to do a thing and then whether, on the whole, it will do them any harm. Englishmen, and perhaps Germans, consider first whether they ought to like a thing and often never reach the questions whether they do like it and whether it will hurt. There is much to be said for both systems, but I suppose it is best to combine them as far as possible.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
““Would she were mine, and I to-day,
Like her, a harvester of hay;”
—John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892)