Articles

Combine Headers: Feed the beast by choosing the best device to harvest crops
 

Mike Shuter receives an "A" for innovation
 

Plan now if you think you'll need to add harvest capacity this fall.
 

Number crunching helps with the decision, but there are intangibles as well.
 

MachineryLink’s Manager of Technical Service, Earl Knuth is featured as the “Combine Doctor” in the August issue of Successful Farming. Click on this link to review his top 20 check points to prepare your combine for harvest.

Riskwise decisions really paid off in generating and preserving wealth in 2008. They'll be even more important in 2009 as worldwide liquidity issues continue to impact agriculture.

Farm equipment leaser MachineryLink Inc. has raised $18.4 million in Series B funding. Three new individual investors - Jack Blumenstein, Glen A. Taylor and Oakleigh Thorne - led the round, joined by existing investors Adams Street Partners, Alpha Capital Partners, October Capital, River Cities Capital Funds and individuals, said Jay Lang, vice president of finance and strategic development for MachineryLink. Valuation was not disclosed.

Tony Vondrak, who farms just west of Hinton, Iowa, wants to harvest this fall's crop of corn and soybeans with a newer combine. But the six-figure cost of a brand new model gave him second thoughts about buying one.

New economies, lease options warrant re-assessment of costs and risks associated with combine ownership.

When the Hicks family looked into upgrading harvest equipment, it found the cost of a new combine hard to swallow, a quarter million dollars or more. The new technology lets you do yield mapping, online moisture monitoring.

Aside from the land itself, high-price rolling stock probably represents the biggest capital investment most crop growers make.

Last year I was looking to upgrade one of our combines and decided to try a company called MachineryLink, which takes the concept of sharing machinery far beyond a typical partnership you might have with a neighbor. The company moves machines around the country, doubling or even tripling usage on a machine.

U.S. livestock production has changed from industries dominated by family-based, small-scale, relatively independent firms to one of larger firms more tightly aligned across the production and distribution chain. Poultry, dairy, and beef feedlot operations consolidated long ago, but pork has been more recent. The changes both in size of hog operations and in their vertical alignment in a period just over a decade have been dramatic.

The word "innovation" usually brings to mind some kind of technology - a new computer, an automobile advancement or some other "hardware" improvement. Yet you can also innovate business practices and in that process find new ways to profit or use available capital in your operation.

Mike Patten breathed a sigh of relief this fall when the combine arrived. Patten and his dad sold their 1999 combine after hours of careful homework converged with an improved used machinery market. They're leasing a 2005 combine with 200 hours from MachineryLink.

Justin and Jodi Busenlehner have found a good equipment lease is better than owning combines or hiring custom harvesters.

Lynn White farms over 7,600 acres of row crops with his brother-in-law and father-in-law, but says they "don't own a combine, thank the Lord." The Monterey, La., farmer adds, "It's worked out well for us."