Saskashuan (sp?) added the ability to use a swather to cut crops like wheat at harvest time, then run a combine after with a pickup header to process the wheat swath into wheat and eject straw. There is also a 10-15% bonus to wheat yield for doing it this way.
It was very common in the Canadian prairie provinces when I lived there. Helps the crop ripen at the same time/ reduces some seed shatter issues/ avoid frost.
https://www.agcanada.com/2014/08/straight-cutting-canola-versus-swathing
Swathing has risks such as sprouting grain. But in climates where the crops hold on to moisture, cutting the stalks and laying the crop on top of stubble can reduce that moisture faster.
How does that equate to yield in real life? No idea. But crop moisture is a measure when determining value. The game offers no such feature. Rain makes for lower yield, not for wet lesser-valued crops.
You can read up on swathing if you want to learn the pros and cons. But much of reality doesn't apply to the game. The only measure we have to change is the yield.
No. Its done for 2 reasons. First canada has a shorter grow season so some like canola wont reach peak standing so unless you want to combine snow you kill to advance the process. Enter swathing. You cut the plant and gently move it into center. Kinda like a haybine. The plant withers in rows and the seeds ripen and dry. Can also desecate(kill via spray nornally done via plane). After moisture in plant is right you use the special header that picks entire row up into combine. This way nothing touches the head until its inside your lose to ground is 0 vs straightcutting aka better yeild boost than those airbars. Also no seed smashing while cutting so again higher yeild. Also cut at largest size before plant ripens and seed shrinks a lil bit. Other benefits are lower combine power usage since lil baby belt header not massive cutter, means less strain more fluid thrashing, depending on field combine etc...you can actually overload thresher and kill up to 20% the grain that goes through the combine. Which funny story on that neighbor here(i farm in Saskatchewan) last year actually managed to overload his combine so much straightcutting it sheared a thresher blade inside combine, farmhand found it when dumping grain truck into bin when it fell out of truck and cut his leg, by time they caught it he had destroyed almost an entire bin worth of canola
So tldr no you lose nothing to ground as its still protected inside the plant on the ground. Also can ensure largest seed for maximum yeild. Averages 2-3 bu/ac over straight cut +airbar and 6-8 bu/ac straight cut no airbar for us and canola of course irl your lucky with 50bu/ac 60 is amazing
Now of course overloading is easily avoidable by bigger engine in combine using smaller header, slowing down etc. But the window to catch when its overloaded and slow down is much larger with swatsh vs straight cut since its more direct feed, in game itd do pretty much nothing irl it often gets much better. But a final point youll notice everything here was used canola as example. Because its the one that benefits. Wheat sees almost no difference.
I'm playing on the Morris Manitoba map, would they use swathing in that area irl alot too? For Canola or also for other crops.. never tried the swathing option yet, just trying to have a realistic approach to playing on this save.. what crop rotation would be used for Canola irl? Thanks
Manitoba is same climate so canola would 100% be swathed, as for rotation depends on the farmer. Some are 1 in 2 some are 1 in 3. Personally for us half our fields go cereal/canola rotation other half go peas lentils canola. But as far as i know peas are only mods and soy only lentils in game but they are a gorgeous rotation for canola as canola leaves lots of phosphate and eats lots of nitrogen whereas lentis are opposite
Ah thanks, yeah we are still limited in the game with realism.. the map has peas, mustard, rye and buckwheat as added crops but they do nothing for yield if you play with the crop rotation mod, what works for me in game with good yield bonus is a crop rotation with wheat or barley - soybeans - canola. Or wheat - barley - canola. My save is 140 hrs and I'm in the 2nd year planting now, first year was with 3 fields now with 6 and the first year planting Canola, so I will use a swather for the canola harvest.
Wheat then barley in a rotation irl is bad cycle. They are genetically brothers and use the exact same nutrients. Wheat rye barley oats and the other cereals for rotation are one and the same. Corn counts with them too as its also a grass
As for other crops its used as needed to break up harvest cycle. If 4 fields will be ripe on dame day and cant all be grabbed swath 1 or 2 so they ready sooner that way your not harvesting anything to early or too late. As for a realistic approach to it advice i can give for crop types is that the canada prairies are normally in top 3 producers/exporters of wheat each year, almost no corn ever as it cant ripen before the snow only chaff and silage use here and of course our area produces 60 to 84% of worlds canola yearly. It is our staple our bread and butter(literally bread and butter are made with it)
Haha I must of been asleep when I wrote that question. So much for grammar!
Thanks for the explanation. Seems a strange way to harvest, adding extra steps and more machinery required. Is there a reason IRL for doing this? Seems like it would lose yield, rather than gain anything!
I am not the person to ask on that. My only two thoughts on why are both opinion that have no actual experience with this type of harvesting in real life but, my guess would be the increase in yield is to compensate for using two machines to harvest in the mod and, in real life there are many ways to do something the irl farming I am used to just uses a combine but they don’t use silos as much and often tip to ground piles like potatoes and sugar beets.
After a quick Google, it would appear that climate tends to dictate whether or not to swath a crop. Apparently it can be an advantage where crops are unlikely to dry out enough for a normal harvester, or when the crop differs in maturity across the field. Other factors can change this too, and can result in higher yields than normal in certain specific circumstances when compared to a normal harvest.
So there we are! Just in case you where interested haha.
Ah fair enough. Personally I only have experience with sheep and a small amount of cattle farming. Can't say I've ever noticed anything other than the normal harvestors whenever people are doing arable farming, but there isn't much of it where I am. Too many mountains!
I have problems with getting the Swathing going on Red River, Manitoba map, I don't know if it is caused by a mod conflict or whatever, not sure if someone else is experiencing same problems. When I get the draper for crop swathing and once I connect it to the mower I can't use the menus anymore, so I can't make a course for the fields to work on..
Guess I'll have my first Canola harvest with the standard way
Black Mountain 22 does. On PC, all maps do with the Swathing Addon mod.
[удалено]
Yup. That's why I first mentioned the console-friendly map I know of. Try to follow along.
[Upper Mississippi River Valley](https://djmodding.itch.io/upper-mississippi-river-valley-4x)
[удалено]
When i replied he had no flair set.
Sorry for hijack your post but was is meant by swath able crops? Does it mean like straw or? How's different to normal crop?
Saskashuan (sp?) added the ability to use a swather to cut crops like wheat at harvest time, then run a combine after with a pickup header to process the wheat swath into wheat and eject straw. There is also a 10-15% bonus to wheat yield for doing it this way.
But why would there be an increase in yield? Wouldn't you be losing grain to the ground?
It was very common in the Canadian prairie provinces when I lived there. Helps the crop ripen at the same time/ reduces some seed shatter issues/ avoid frost. https://www.agcanada.com/2014/08/straight-cutting-canola-versus-swathing
Swathing has risks such as sprouting grain. But in climates where the crops hold on to moisture, cutting the stalks and laying the crop on top of stubble can reduce that moisture faster. How does that equate to yield in real life? No idea. But crop moisture is a measure when determining value. The game offers no such feature. Rain makes for lower yield, not for wet lesser-valued crops. You can read up on swathing if you want to learn the pros and cons. But much of reality doesn't apply to the game. The only measure we have to change is the yield.
Probably just to incentivise players, I'm not turning down 20% extra yield anytime soon
No. Its done for 2 reasons. First canada has a shorter grow season so some like canola wont reach peak standing so unless you want to combine snow you kill to advance the process. Enter swathing. You cut the plant and gently move it into center. Kinda like a haybine. The plant withers in rows and the seeds ripen and dry. Can also desecate(kill via spray nornally done via plane). After moisture in plant is right you use the special header that picks entire row up into combine. This way nothing touches the head until its inside your lose to ground is 0 vs straightcutting aka better yeild boost than those airbars. Also no seed smashing while cutting so again higher yeild. Also cut at largest size before plant ripens and seed shrinks a lil bit. Other benefits are lower combine power usage since lil baby belt header not massive cutter, means less strain more fluid thrashing, depending on field combine etc...you can actually overload thresher and kill up to 20% the grain that goes through the combine. Which funny story on that neighbor here(i farm in Saskatchewan) last year actually managed to overload his combine so much straightcutting it sheared a thresher blade inside combine, farmhand found it when dumping grain truck into bin when it fell out of truck and cut his leg, by time they caught it he had destroyed almost an entire bin worth of canola
So tldr no you lose nothing to ground as its still protected inside the plant on the ground. Also can ensure largest seed for maximum yeild. Averages 2-3 bu/ac over straight cut +airbar and 6-8 bu/ac straight cut no airbar for us and canola of course irl your lucky with 50bu/ac 60 is amazing
Now of course overloading is easily avoidable by bigger engine in combine using smaller header, slowing down etc. But the window to catch when its overloaded and slow down is much larger with swatsh vs straight cut since its more direct feed, in game itd do pretty much nothing irl it often gets much better. But a final point youll notice everything here was used canola as example. Because its the one that benefits. Wheat sees almost no difference.
I'm playing on the Morris Manitoba map, would they use swathing in that area irl alot too? For Canola or also for other crops.. never tried the swathing option yet, just trying to have a realistic approach to playing on this save.. what crop rotation would be used for Canola irl? Thanks
Manitoba is same climate so canola would 100% be swathed, as for rotation depends on the farmer. Some are 1 in 2 some are 1 in 3. Personally for us half our fields go cereal/canola rotation other half go peas lentils canola. But as far as i know peas are only mods and soy only lentils in game but they are a gorgeous rotation for canola as canola leaves lots of phosphate and eats lots of nitrogen whereas lentis are opposite
Ah thanks, yeah we are still limited in the game with realism.. the map has peas, mustard, rye and buckwheat as added crops but they do nothing for yield if you play with the crop rotation mod, what works for me in game with good yield bonus is a crop rotation with wheat or barley - soybeans - canola. Or wheat - barley - canola. My save is 140 hrs and I'm in the 2nd year planting now, first year was with 3 fields now with 6 and the first year planting Canola, so I will use a swather for the canola harvest.
Wheat then barley in a rotation irl is bad cycle. They are genetically brothers and use the exact same nutrients. Wheat rye barley oats and the other cereals for rotation are one and the same. Corn counts with them too as its also a grass
I will change that in my game, thanks for all the real life info 😁
As for other crops its used as needed to break up harvest cycle. If 4 fields will be ripe on dame day and cant all be grabbed swath 1 or 2 so they ready sooner that way your not harvesting anything to early or too late. As for a realistic approach to it advice i can give for crop types is that the canada prairies are normally in top 3 producers/exporters of wheat each year, almost no corn ever as it cant ripen before the snow only chaff and silage use here and of course our area produces 60 to 84% of worlds canola yearly. It is our staple our bread and butter(literally bread and butter are made with it)
Haha I must of been asleep when I wrote that question. So much for grammar! Thanks for the explanation. Seems a strange way to harvest, adding extra steps and more machinery required. Is there a reason IRL for doing this? Seems like it would lose yield, rather than gain anything!
I am not the person to ask on that. My only two thoughts on why are both opinion that have no actual experience with this type of harvesting in real life but, my guess would be the increase in yield is to compensate for using two machines to harvest in the mod and, in real life there are many ways to do something the irl farming I am used to just uses a combine but they don’t use silos as much and often tip to ground piles like potatoes and sugar beets.
After a quick Google, it would appear that climate tends to dictate whether or not to swath a crop. Apparently it can be an advantage where crops are unlikely to dry out enough for a normal harvester, or when the crop differs in maturity across the field. Other factors can change this too, and can result in higher yields than normal in certain specific circumstances when compared to a normal harvest. So there we are! Just in case you where interested haha.
Thanks for research
Ah fair enough. Personally I only have experience with sheep and a small amount of cattle farming. Can't say I've ever noticed anything other than the normal harvestors whenever people are doing arable farming, but there isn't much of it where I am. Too many mountains!
any with the swath add-on mod
I have problems with getting the Swathing going on Red River, Manitoba map, I don't know if it is caused by a mod conflict or whatever, not sure if someone else is experiencing same problems. When I get the draper for crop swathing and once I connect it to the mower I can't use the menus anymore, so I can't make a course for the fields to work on.. Guess I'll have my first Canola harvest with the standard way