Do you have trash or treasure sitting in your field? Combines can help you execute on the decisions you make at harvest that will equal effective residue management — turning trash into treasure.
From trash to treasure, crop residue used to be simply the material left in the field after harvest. Now, its higher-quality name better reflects the value it holds — both as its use for the actual material, such as baled straw, and for the benefits that properly managed crop residue can offer the soil. These benefits can range from reducing wind and water erosion to increasing overall organic matter or to providing nutrient value.
Effective residue management starts with the decisions you make at harvest. Depending on your needs, your combine presents a great deal of liberty for leaving residue how you want it, whether that be mostly intact or finely chopped and distributed. For example, running the header as high as possible in small grains will reduce the amount of straw going through the machine, reducing the volume of ground-up straw and leaving more standing straw for erosion protection. Conversely, running the header lower will put more straw through the machine and the straw chopper, sizing more of the stems for better decomposition.
The situation is similar when working with corn, with a slight twist. Although header height doesn’t affect the amount of material entering the combine, lower header heights pull more of the stalk through the stalk rolls in the header, which tend to crush tough stalks and open them for faster decomposition. Chopping corn heads offers the option of chopping stalks at harvest.
The residue-chopping and -spreading capabilities of combines are keeping pace with the increasing interest in residue management. Case IH Axial-Flow® combines now offer standard chopper and spreader options ranging from windrow to full width of cut. The larger 240 series combines offer the optional MagnaCut™ chopper to obtain chopped residue from the toughest crops.
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