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:
“... God allows the wheat and the tares to grow up together, and ... the tares frequently get the start of the wheat and kill it out. The only difference between the wheat and human beings is that the latter have intellect and ought to combine and pull out the tares, root and branch.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)
““Would she were mine, and I to-day,
Like her, a harvester of hay;”
—John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892)