Harvesting the Wheat

Harvesting the Wheat
In the United States, the wheat harvest will usually start in early May in southern Texas reach its peak in the hard red winter areas of the Southwest in early June, and end in October in the northern portions of the red spring wheat area.

Many years ago, the common method of harvesting grains was the binder, which may possibly still be used on some small farms.

Binders have been replaced nearly everywhere by combines, large and small.

These machines cut and thresh the crop and are usually self-propelled. Spring wheat may be cut windrowed or swathed before thrashing.

After combining, most spring and winter wheat is either stored in the farms for a time or promptly taken by truck to local elevators it is loaded on railway cars and carried to terminal markets.

Each year better highways and larger payloads increase the distances wheat can be hauled economically by truck.

Particularly in the corn belt area, soft red winter wheat is often stored in the farm, since smaller amounts are produced in the region and adequate storage facilities are not prohibitive in cost.

Both farm storage and hugh cooperative terminal storage facilities are common in the major wheat producing areas, where government programs in some years subsidize both types of storage.
Harvesting the Wheat

Small Millets

Small Millets
Small millets are small grained cereals mainly grown in arid, semi arid or montane zones as rain fed crops under marginal and sub-marginal conditions of soil fertility and moisture. Small millets are important to global agriculture and are a major cereal crops, grown in fairly large areas of South Asia, China, the former USSR and Africa. They are also found in areas of the United States and Europe on a limited scale.

Finger millet is the principal small millet species grown in South Asia, followed by kodo millet, foxtail millet, little millet, proso millet and barnyard millet, in that order. Foxtail millet and pros millet are important in China and the latter is grown extensively in southwestern USSR. In Africa, finger millet, teff and fonio have local importance.

The average global productivity of small millets is almost 1 t/ha. There has been a trend in the last two decades to replace these crops with major cereal like maize and wheat, which has been a factor in the reduction of area under these crops. Presently, small millets are cultivated in areas where they produce a more dependable harvest than other crop, this has been largely responsible for their continued presence and cultivation in many parts of the world there is now an increasing realization of this fact and a greater awareness that these crops merit more research and development.
Small Millets