Harvesting Change: The Revolutionary Role of Combine Harvesters | Full Documentary

We live in a world that our ancestors would not recognize. All over the planet, the impact of human ingenuity is present everywhere. We surpass the limits of our planet in speeds, depths and heights that would leave our ancestors breathless. What drives all these achievements is the extraordinary gift of humanity for invention. With genius and inspiration, we create exceptional solutions to complex problems. From everyday to spectacular, some inventions are good and others not so much. This series celebrates the millions of ways that these great inventions transformed our world. It's a small step for man, but a giant leap for humanity. It's a kind of superhero. It made our work easier, changed our society and shaped our landscapes. Hardly any other invention had such a positive impact on the food of humanity as this one. Inside it, highly complex processes occur. It's a factory on wheels. There are so many functionalities that this one machine has. This technological wonder has fundamentally transformed our way of life. It can be up to approximately 45 meters wide and weigh 18 tons. Almost as big as a small house. Most of us would still live and work in the countryside. This great invention can guarantee the survival of future generations. With such a large population, we will need to produce more food, even more than we are producing today, to be able to support everyone. It cost the lives of thousands of animals and now feeds millions of them. Without it, life as we know it would be completely different. Our modern society is significantly influenced by it. The harvester. Modern harvesters harvest all over the world with technical precision. The cart positions the harvester so that the cutting bar can cut the stems, before the harvester is pulled into the harvester jaws. Inside the harvester, metal rolls deflate the saffron and the grains fall. The blower separates the straw from the grain. The straw is transported further back. Along with the straw, all the unwanted parts of the plants fall back into the field to enrich the next sowing station as nutrients. What is fascinating about a grain harvester is that it is a factory. But a factory on wheels, it does the work of a dozen different people, all these tasks of painting in the field, in the place, and it simply returns with the finished product. It's incredible, a technological wonder. How much this miracle of technology excites people is demonstrated in this German TV commercial from the 60s. Wow, look at that. This is a machine, nothing compares. The grain harvester holds the world record for harvesting cereals in eight hours. It harvests 675 tons of wheat. With this, you can supply seven large cities with bread for a whole day. To achieve this 100 years ago, hundreds of workers would have to have killed themselves working all summer. Man in tune with nature and its seasons. With his own hands. He cultivates the land that feeds him. The images seem romantic, but the reality was completely different. Working in the field with a harvester is an incredibly arduous job, a strenuous activity. The posture you would adopt with your back bent to be able to do this is not healthy. Times were hard. That was just the agony of harvesting. In the fall, the arduous work continued when the grain was separated from the spines and straw. These were jobs that required incredible amounts of strength, skill as well. Think especially in the field to separate the grains, it's not easy to do. So you would be doing this for ten hours in a row, an incredibly tiring and difficult job. Harvesters increased the production of a farmer by 100 times in a short period of time. But it took a long time for technology to reach this point. The harvester was preceded by three great inventions. The deburring machine. The elk-cutting machine. And the mower. Without them, the harvester as we know it today would not exist. In 1828, Reverend Patrick Bell launched the foundations of the current harvesters and started a small revolution. His invention can cut grains, and as the Father of Scotland is a man of God, the only purpose of his brilliant invention is to serve humanity. He does not ask for a patent for his design and consequently does not profit a penny from his revolutionary creation. This machine fundamentally changed how harvesters were made at the time. With the machine, farmers could produce 10 or 20 times more than before with a human labor force. The grass-cutting machine quickly became a sales success, at least in the United States, where agricultural machines became increasingly popular. There were huge plans to cultivate and a notorious shortage of manpower. Each mechanical aid to take advantage of the vastness of the Old West had a huge impact here. In the Old Continent, however, the situation was very different. The European farms looked like a huge colored carpet. Small areas were passed from generation to generation, and sometimes, divided between the children of the farmers. In Europe, there were enough people to work in the fields, buy a large machine and at a high cost, it was simply not economical. In the small European fields, the grain was cut by hand for much longer. But even with the practical cutting machines already running through the vast fields of America, here, collecting, tying and stacking the grains was still done through manual work. But soon a mechanical solution was found, even if it had been in an unusual way. Joan Appleby, only 18 years old, helped in the farm and knew about the concerns and problems of the harvesters. Legend has it that her dog was the one who gave her the revolutionary idea. And as the dog struggled, in some way he bit the rope, pulled it and twisted it into a completely new knot, which was perfect for tying the corn. It was tight enough to keep the corn together and could still be loosened when necessary. I have no idea how he managed to tie a knot with his teeth. The dog is clearly the genius in this story. He is the great inventor. With the sudden inspiration of the dog, the grain could now be tied in knots. The simple but ingenious knot kept the grains firmly together, but could also be easily loosened if necessary. The Gavela tying machine inaugurated the agricultural industrial revolution. Just this early invention had a huge positive effect on all these workers. They no longer need to use size, they no longer need to occupy exhaustive positions. The machine can do almost all this work. However, one thing still needed to be done by hand, to pick the thorns in the field and to plow them in the farm. In the mid-19th century, the first steam-powered plowing machines emerged. Now, even though it is a physically less difficult job, many people were still needed to carry out the plowing. Many people were needed to operate this machine. One puts the whole grain on top, another puts it inside, some are taking the products out of each side, and at least one more operates the engine. It's a lot of people in one machine. Steam-powered plowing machines are true monsters. They devour a lot of straw and spit it out like grains. But you needed fire to operate them, and that made them dangerous. In fact, it was actually quite dangerous. You have a machine with fire inside it, and it is surrounded by piles of dry straw. You can imagine what could potentially happen, and, in fact, the only precaution available was just a bucket of water. The process of harvesting continued to be laborious, even with mechanical assistance, and it still required a lot of helping hands. In this way, inventors continued to look for inventions that would simplify the hard work in the field. The harvester was the solution. It combined the harvester with the tie-dryer and the sieve, making all these devices superfluous. This multi-tasking machine enchants both young and old people. You can find it in miniature form in the children's rooms. Some of them vote to marry it. And fans of the harvester go to work on their own giant machine every day. You can even find them among gamers and computer geeks at the largest computer and electronic games fair in the world, the harvester, along with its community of loyal fans. Harvesters are pretty cool. These giant machines are definitely some of the most beautiful agricultural machines. A large harvester with a cutting bar of 9 or 12 meters. They are immense and powerful. They are certainly some of the most fascinating machines. And you can drive these powerful machines in the computer game Famine Simulator. In the virtual world, agricultural fans can make a childhood dream come true My grandfather had a farm before. I used to help on the farm when I was a kid. I still have a love for agriculture. That's why Famine Simulator is perfect. It gives you an authentic impression of the feeling. Of course, sitting in a real harvester is different from the virtual experience, but it's great, especially if you choose the internal viewing mode. In a way, it really feels like you're sitting in a real harvester. To help players feel like real farmers, the developers of the game had a special idea. I believe that nothing is more crucial in Famine Simulator than authentic agricultural equipment. We have many demanding fans who insist that each screw is in the right place, that the paint is adequate, and they really come to us and say my grandfather has this tractor, it looks different. Every day people come and tell us that it has to be a little different. My grandfather has the harvester, or my father drives that one. Can you please put that in the game? These are the messages I get all the time. Playing as a farmer, almost like in real life. That's what the Farm Simulator promises. But the game also seems to touch on our archaic nature. When we left the countryside, most of us now live in cities. But there must still be something in us that wants to work in the field. It's the most successful game in Switzerland, Germany, and in total. These games have already sold more than 5 million copies. It's a lot of agriculture. In Gamescom in Cologne, the most ambitious players in the game are hoping to win a big prize today. The chances are there. We're well prepared. We have a good strategy. I've been playing Farming Simulator since 2009, just like the members of my team. We've been playing for almost 10 years, and we've been captivated all this time. The total prize for a Farming Simulator is 250,000 euros. The harvester is a real gold mine that not only increases agricultural productivity, but also the world's population. Before the harvester, there were 2.5 billion people on the planet, and now more than three times that amount. The harvester played a huge role in allowing this multiplied population to have access to food. All these people want food, and in addition, their food also wants to eat. Almost 60 billion animals are slaughtered each year. About a third of the world's grain production ends up as animal feed. The other two thirds and animal products feed almost 8 billion people made possible by the harvester. Each American, for example, consumes an average of 287 kilos of dairy products and 83 kilos of meat per year. In addition, 86 kilos of grain-based products and 45 kilos of corn are added. But sugarcane, peas, soy, sunflower and other crops are also harvested by the harvester. This means that more than half of what ends up in your stomach is produced directly or indirectly using the harvester. Without it, your breakfast would probably be very empty. Today, modern harvesters harvest most of the world's fruits. But only a small part of the production ends up in our dishes. In the United States and South America, for example, harvesters harvest large quantities of soy, and even more so because our soy consumption is increasing all the time. But vegetarians, who want to enjoy their tofu and soy milk coffee weightlessly, are not to blame for this. When you think of soy, you might think of soy beans or maybe the soy sauce you put in your sushi. But in fact, 98% of the soy grown is not used for human consumption, and if animal, soy is an ideal crop as an animal food for its very high protein content. In the same way, most of the corn harvest is used for future beef. But large quantities of it are also the basis of a completely different energy supplier. Corn is so important for biogas production because it is possible to achieve high yields with corn and also a high yield of methane gas, which is a perfect alternative to gasoline. This means that harvesters not only produce our food, but also our future fuels. Harvesters are real multitasking machines so they are bought all over the world. Each one of them is adapted to the needs of its future owner. It takes 80 hours to assemble one of these personalized harvesters. In comparison, a small middle class car is assembled in just 14 hours. Each harvester collects hundreds of thousands of tons of grains in its useful life. Farms have always been managed by the family. The farmer's wife took care of the cattle, the home and the children, while the farmer usually managed the farm and carried out the physically demanding work of the harvest. Today, fully air-conditioned machines do the hard work, the laborious work in the field under the scorching heat is a thing of the past. In addition to working muscles, today's farmers also need a different set of skills. They need to understand business environment, they need to understand economy and markets, they need to be engineers and sometimes specialists in AI. The word agriculture simply does not seem to encompass all of this. Large agricultural machines do all the heavy work nowadays. Muscle power hardly plays a role in agriculture now. Therefore, the harvesters also have the potential to turn the roles from top to bottom. In 2012, census data showed that 30% of agricultural operations in the United States are commanded by women. And in 2017, farm owners made 15% more than men. Times are changing. Thanks to large harvesting machines, women can now occupy their rightful place in agriculture, but the real equality is still far from being achieved. More things like the harvester have transformed manual labor agriculture into something much closer to business management, and women are starting to take the lead. The harvester offers a chance to loosen the rigid roles of gender in the agricultural industry. It is no surprise that she has been a woman to fantasize about the first harvester in history. In 1834, the wife of a farmer, in the Midwest of the United States, had a dream. As the harvester travels through her fields, her greedy mouth devours her harvest, and the best of the harvest comes out from the back. The next day, she tells her neighbor about her strange dream. The neighbor was none other than the inventor Hiram Moore. Inspired by her dream, he builds the first harvester In 1835, the machine was 5 meters long, almost as wide, and operated with at least 20 horsepower, but being pulled by horses also caused many problems. They step on the grain, which means that not all the harvest ends up in the harvester. People had to take care of the horses, comb them, control them, and the cattle. This work was removed. So, although they make the work a little easier, they do not make it more efficient in fact. But a solution is close. The steam engine is a global revolution. Energy no longer depends on natural resources such as wind, water, and muscle strength. Steam engines revolutionized technology from the 18th century, and the way they worked was by heating water from the liquid state of the gas, being expansive, generating a very high pressure, driving a piston, and this piston movement was capable of doing other things. And that gave rise to the engine, and engines have driven so much since then. In 1886, George Tochtenberry invents the first steam harvester with completely sustainable organic fuel. He burns what is in abundance in the United States. The agricultural areas are huge, and the cattle can graze freely in the fields, which means that the straw is a waste. They do not need it for stables or as a bed, so it can be burned freely as energy for their harvester. In the early 20th century, more than two-thirds of American grain fields are being harvested by harvesters. This means that the whole country can produce great surpluses. In Europe, it takes more than half a century for a harvester to be established. Why are harvesters made in the United States simply not going to work in European fields? The types of crops here have longer stalks, and because of the rainy summers, they are often lying on the ground making it impossible for large American conglomerates to harvest the saffron. So the harvester is destined for failure in Europe? A small family business in Germany sees its opportunity in the incompatibility of American machines. August Kloss combines two existing agricultural machines, the strapping machine and the debulling machine. In 1937, the first tractor-pulled harvester left the factory. It is perfectly adapted to the needs of European farmers, but its success is suffocated in the initial stages. In 1943, the company needs to stop producing harvesters. The Nazis seek world supremacy and force the class to produce weapons for their war of aggression against Europe. The Second World War paralyses all production of European harvesters. So Germany loses the war, and European harvesters return to the road of success. Then a revolutionary invention brings another quantum leap for the harvester. In the 20th century, the car begins its story of relentless success. The combustion engine becomes cheaper and more powerful. What better idea than to try the new propulsion technology in a harvester? As the harvesters became larger and more hungry for energy, in the mid-20th century, the internal combustion engines were no longer enough. In the 1950s, the harvesters worked at full steam, millions of horses and mules took their last steps. It was time for them to give way to a more efficient combustion engine. In 1920, there were still about 25 million horses and mules in the United States. Only 30 years later, the number of horses and mules has grown to more than 5 million. Today, we keep horses mainly as a hobby for equestrian sports or tourist attractions. They have already been useful as work animals, but they simply cannot compete with the internal combustion engine. However, it is difficult to surpass them in beauty and elegance. the harvester was used to harvest wheat. This is literally a dirty job. Just for its operation, lifting tons of dust in the air, the workers at the end of the day almost seemed to have been in the mines. This is simply crazy. What to do? Is there no way to protect the harvester agriculturalists had the idea that the farmer could rest comfortably during the harvest, as the new standard. Only filtered and absolutely fresh air enters the cabin with air conditioning and can be adjusted individually. This way, the driver feels good during the whole day of work. In our life, we can connect with the whole world in seconds. Our devices are becoming smart and communicate with each other. With the introduction of digitization in the harvester, a new era is emerging. Today's harvesters are a mixture of smart sensors and computer processing. They can tell how ripe and dry the wheat is when the compartment is getting full for the harvester. The farmer can basically monitor, relax and just be calm because it's absolutely high-tech technology. But the harvester had to wait until the turn of the millennium to finally be able to work in a totally independent way. Perhaps it doesn't need the farmer to drive it anymore, but he can do it with satellites, knowing exactly where they need to be at any time. They don't repeat areas of the field already covered and everything is much more precise. What is a great advantage of this is that the whole process of agriculture becomes much more efficient with a precision of two centimeters. Modern harvesters cost as much as an electric barber. You could devastate my entire forest with this tank of yours. Okay, but only if you lend me your crampon. For what? My electric barber machine is broken. Today's harvesters have up to 14 meters of width with their gigantic jaws. They can harvest incredible amounts of grain. As their size increases, their performance also increases. The high-performance engine of this harvester is as big as a telephone booth. Powerful beasts harvest our grain today. Intrigued by this type of machinery, a group of fans of agricultural machines turn their quadricycles into racing vehicles. Although there is no original piece in their vehicles, the machines need to follow certain rules to be accepted as pseudo-harvesters. The front wheels must be larger than the rear ones. This is inspired by the old harvesters. This box is made to imitate straw ejection, and on top we have an imitated grain tank. The race in Luxembourg is an exciting event. Accidents are inevitable and part of the show, because only those who do their best to make their opponents lose control of the vehicle will win. To prepare for the worst, the drivers must take certain safety precautions. You need to have a completely reinforced We have bars on the sides, to prevent other machines from being driven on the same track where you had the accident. There is an emergency stop button inside and another one here. If there is a fire, the machine must be turned off immediately. Even today, something can happen. You never know. Drivers from all over Europe put themselves at risk in every race. Every year there are injuries that can make a guy nervous. Like this. We have been working for this race all season long. Today is the day. A race at home. We only have this once every two years. Many spectators came to support us. This means a lot to me. But I gave my best. But will this be enough for your race at home? Many fans of the monster rooster must have seen their local hero on the track. On the track, the race giants can reach speeds of up to 100 km per hour. This requires extreme concentration of the drivers. But the machines must also resist the traps of the race track. The girls signed! The race track is not just a tool and a hobby for the skilled. Throughout history, it has also become a threat to people. The race track has made many victims on its way to becoming one of the most popular agricultural machines. It has not only made work easier for the rural worker, but it has also taken away from them. Countless jobs have been victimized by the sharp blades of its cutting devices or have been lost under its giant wheels. What remains a mere fantasy of violence in this film B, has become a bitter reality in Europe in the 20th century. At the end of the 19th century, the European labor landscape was very different. Agriculture was the main source of income for the people of Europe. In 1875, three in four people cultivated their own grain and slaughtered their own animals. Seventy years later, things have changed. Only one of these four people still works in the fields. Many look for a job in the city or become unemployed. But is the harvester partly to blame for this? Its poverty is fueled by another revolutionary invention, steam ships that transport food to countries around the world. The steam engine was part of what we can now see with the benefit of retrospective, as a continuous process of globalization. Suddenly, this meant that food produced all over the world could be transported by ship and steam train to find entirely new markets, making the world much smaller than it was before. Brawn becomes an export success in America. Between 1850 and 1900, American wheat exports increased 40 times. This ruined the livelihood of many farmers. Because no matter how much small European farms try, they can't compete with the large agricultural companies in the colonies. In the United States, Australia, New Zealand and South America, farmers had access to large areas of available land. Huge amounts of grain could be planted and harvested quickly and cheaply. This makes the grain from the colonies incredibly cheap. The price of grain drops so dramatically that it is cheaper for Europe to buy grain from abroad than to produce it locally. The cheap grain pressures European farmers. Those who can't invest in new agricultural machines end up in poverty. Nine out of ten farms close throughout the 20th century. Back in the day, farms used to be small, sustainable, managed by many people, but with this industrialization, the landscape and the structure of agriculture completely changed and small farms went bankrupt. They couldn't produce enough, they couldn't pay for the machines, they couldn't produce enough. Almost a century ago, Europe looked like this. Today, after the triumph of the harvester, it looks like this. What happened? Many small farms were swallowed up by large farms. So that large agricultural machines can cultivate the land efficiently, the fields are incorporated and expanded. In other continents, the harvester has also changed the environment. In Brazil, many hectares of Amazonian forests had to give way to automated agriculture. In space, you can see the vastness of cattle pastures and soybean fields. Like a ferocious parasite, the fields gradually infiltrate this unique ecosystem. Huge forests were deforested and vast plains accessed to be cultivated by large agricultural machines. Many areas need to be irrigated artificially so that the land can bear fruit. It's hard to imagine that before the discovery of America, half of the land was covered by a dense forest. The axis of ruralism promoted by agricultural mechanization continues to this day. More than half of the world's population now lives in cities, up to 2050. It is expected to be more than two-thirds. Small cities are turning into large cities, and large cities into megacities. Beijing will soon join several other cities in the region with the aim of creating the metropolitan region of Indindie. It will have about 100 million inhabitants. This is an incredible number of people. Especially in developing countries, megacities are becoming more and more important. And more and more efficient harvesters are also responsible for this, although they are rarely seen in the countries of the South. For farmers in Africa, time seems to have stopped. 80% of them still work with manual tools, without pesticides, without fertilizers, and without harvesters. In developing countries, the agricultural revolution has not yet arrived. In the global market, however, they have to compete with farmers from Europe and America. The large high-tech farms there are up to a thousand times more productive than in developing countries. The agricultural revolution left rich parts of the world richer and poor parts of the world poorer. So despite the increase in productivity and the stores full of grains, about 2 billion people still suffer from malnutrition. And that's an absurdity. Poor countries are importing more and more cheap grains from Europe and America. This makes them particularly dependent on the fluctuations in the global price of grains. If they increase, many of them can no longer pay for their daily bread and that's becoming more and more the case. All over the world, the climate is going crazy. Implacable droughts. Furious hurricanes. Unpredictable forest fires. Global warming also makes the harvester sweat. It faces growing criticism. As these monster harvesters cross the fields with a thunderclap, their wheels press the compost down to become as hard as concrete. And after that, nothing grows. Puppies and other small creatures can barely survive on compacted soil. However, they are absolutely necessary because they release the earth and produce valuable humus. Without them, the fields become infertile. Many times you see precious water ponds in the ditches left by agricultural machines that simply evaporate in the sun. It can no longer penetrate compacted soil. In recent years, farmers around the world have faced more extreme weather conditions. If a period of intense drought is followed by a season of intense rains, compacted soil simply cannot absorb all the excess water. It squirts and leaves the fields, taking with it the fertile, superficial soil. Thus, precious fertile soil is irreparably lost and can only be reconstructed in many decades. The harvest brought another problem with it. Small fields are not suitable for huge agricultural machines. You can even see this in modern farms, where there are rarely potatoes, beets, grain crops together. They usually focus on a product to make the most of the necessary technology. As far as the eye can see, only wheat. Only soybeans. This makes it easier to harvest, but it harms the environment. If the same crop is grown in a large area, this crop will extract the same combination of nutrients from the soil. But farmers can fight this by adding artificial fertilizers back to the soil. However, it is a delicate balance if farmers add a lot of fertilizers. This will affect the health of humans, animals, and entire local ecosystems. Animals can hardly find food in monocultures nowadays. Species of endangered animals, such as bees, depend especially on the diversity of the plant world. If every plant per kilometer blooms only for two weeks a year, bees will starve for the next 50. And monocultures are a real banquet for pests, which makes farmers have to use more powerful mechanisms, known for decimating bee populations. An alarming German study showed that over 25 years, the weight of insects found in this specific part of the country has decreased by 75%. So, with monocultures, bees die of hunger or are poisoned, and as a result, we can be the next. Harvesting is in crisis. And while compacting the soil and cultivating monocultures are no longer just concerns of environmentalists, the supply of food for all humanity is at stake. The harvester supplies food to almost 8 billion people. But it can also guarantee that we face an unprecedented food crisis. Here, agricultural engineers are working on a solution, nature-friendly harvesters. If we increase the productivity of the machines, we will see that the cutting bars are approximately one meter longer every 10 years, and that the weight of the machine increases by 3 tons every 10 years. We do not consider machines that are getting bigger and bigger as up-to-date. In their laboratory, researchers are studying how the harvesters can be lighter without losing productivity. If we take the function of a harvester and divide it into several units, they all do the same thing, except that now productivity is no longer loaded into a single unit, but rather multiplied by the number of machines. The cutting bar of a single mini-harvester is only 6.4 meters wide. But the fact that three or more harvesters are operating at the same time makes them more productive than any conventional harvester. The good news is that the weight of the small harvesters is only a fraction. The soil does not compress under its load. Researchers are working on different concepts for future agricultural machines that guarantee sustainable agriculture and still increase productivity. These are the challenges of our time. We are about to reach 10 billion. This means that we will need to produce a huge amount of food in much more challenging conditions. And these are challenges that agriculture needs to face, as it has done in the past, in crucial moments. It must adapt if we want to survive. The harvester has changed everything, our environment, our society, our habitats and our food. It has created more diverse populations. But it also poses dangers. Huge monocultures are destroying our ecosystems and the technical advantage of industrial nations is creating dependencies and hunger for the countries of the South. We need harvesters that protect the environment and increase productivity. We need sustainable development projects for the countries of the South that allow farmers to invest in agricultural machinery. Only then can the harvester continue its history of success as a great invention. Only then can it continue to positively influence our lives.