Harvesting field corn

Field corn is the classic big ears of yellow dented corn, dried and harvested in the fall. It’s called “dent corn” because of the distinctive dent that forms on the kernel as the corn dries.

In a large area, field corn is commercially harvested using a massive piece of machinery, called a combine.

A combine harvester, or combine, is the tool of choice for harvesting corn and other grains. The reason this piece of equipment is called a combine is simply because it combines several jobs into a single machine. A combine cuts the corn plants down and threshes the kernels off the cobs. The kernels travel to a storage tank while the rest of the plants get deposited back onto the field, where they can fertilize the soil for next year.

Then once the corn combine is filled in a storage tank, the kernels are released into a hauling trailer to take the kernels to the processing facility.

A corn combine can process about 200 acres of field corn each day, which is important as corn needs to be harvested at a certain moisture content for proper storage.
Harvesting field corn